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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


Mowgli and the Lone Wolf . 

The “ Council Rock ”... 

“ Akela/’ the Lone Wolf . . 

Mowgli and Bagheera . 

Mowgli Leaving the Jungle 
Baloo in the Forest .... 
The “ Cold Lairs ” . . . . 

The Monkey Fight .... 

“ Kaa ” the Python ..... 
The Village Club .... 
Shere Khan in the Jungle . 

The Return of the Buffalo Herd 
Rikki-tikki-tavi and Nag 

Kala Nag. 

Elephant-Dance. 

Toomal of the Elephants 


F rontispiece 

FACING PAGE 
. 16 




22 






















THE JUNGLE BOOK 





Now Rann, the Kite, brings home the night 
That Mang, the Bat, sets free — 

The herds are shut in byre and hut, 

For loosed till dawn are we. 

This is the hour of pride and power. 

Talon and tush and claw. 

Oh, hear the call! — Good hunting all 
That keep the Jungle Law! 

Night-Song in the Jungle. 






MOWGLI’S BROTHERS 

I T was seven o’clock of a very warm 
evening in the Seeonee hills when Father 
Wolf woke up from his day’s rest, scratched 
himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one 
after the other to get rid of the sleepy feel¬ 
ing in the tips. Mother Wolf lay with her 
big gray nose dropped across her four tum¬ 
bling, squealing cubs, and the moon shone 
into the mouth of the cave where they all 
lived. “ Augrh! ” said Father Wolf, it is 
time to hunt again ”; and he was going to 
spring downhill when a little shadow with a 
bushy tail crossed the threshold and whined: 
“ Good luck go with you, O Chief of the 
Wolves; and good luck and strong white 
teeth go with the noble children, that they 
3 


/ 


/ 



4 


THE JUNGLE BOOK 


may never forget the hungry in this world.” 

It was the jackal — Tabaqui, the Dish- 
licker — and the wolves of India despise 
Tabaqui because he runs about making mis¬ 
chief, and telling tales, and eating rags and 
pieces of leather from the village rubbish- 
heaps. They are afraid of him too, because 
Tabaqui, more than any one else in the 
jungle, is apt to go mad, and then he forgets 
that he was ever afraid of any one, and runs 
through the forest biting everything in his 
way. Even the tiger hides when little 
Tabaqui goes mad, for madness is the most 
disgraceful thing that can overtake a wild 
creature. We call it hydrophobia, but they 
call it dewanee — the madness — and run. 

Enter, then, and look,” said Father 
Wolf, stiffly; ‘‘ but there is no food here.” 

‘‘ For a wolf, no,” said Tabaqui; “ but for 
so mean a person as myself a dry bone is a 
good feast. Who are we, the Gidur-log 
[the Jackal People], to pick and choose.?” 




MOWGLI’S BROTHERS 5 


He scuttled to the back of the cave, where he 
found the bone of a buck with some meat on 
it, and sat cracking the end merrily. 

All thanks for this good meal,” he said, 
licking his lips. “ How beautiful are the 
noble children! How large are their eyes! 
And so young too! Indeed, indeed, I might 
have remembered that the children of kings 
are men from the beginning.” 

Now, Tabaqui knew as well as any one else 
that there is nothing so unlucky as to com¬ 
pliment children to their faces; and it pleased 
him to see Mother and Father Wolf look un¬ 
comfortable. 

Tabaqui sat still, rejoicing in the mischief 
that he had made, and then he said spitefully: 

“ Shere Khan, the Big One, has shifted his 
hunting-grounds. He will hunt among these 
hills during the next moon, so he has told 
me.” 

Shere Khan was the tiger who lived near the 
Waingunga River, twenty miles away. 



6 


THE JUNGLE BOOK 


“He has no right!” Father Wolf began 
angrily. “ By the Law of the Jungle he has 
no right to change his quarters without fair 
warning. He will frighten every head of 
game within ten miles; and I — I have to kill 
for two, these days.” 

“ His mother did not call him Lungri [the 
Lame One] for nothing,” said Mother Wolf, 
quietly. “ He has been lame in one foot 
from his birth. That is why he has only 
killed cattle. Now the villagers of the Wain- 
gunga are angry with him, and he has come 
here to make our villagers angry. They will 
scour the jungle for him when he is far away, 
and we and our children must run when the 
grass is set alight. Indeed, we are very grate¬ 
ful to Shere Khan! ” 

“ Shall I tell him of your gratitude.? ” said 
Tabaqui. 

“ Out! ” snapped Father Wolf. “ Out, 
and hunt with thy master. Thou hast done 
harm enough for one night.” 




MOWGLI’S BROTHERS 7 


“ I go,” said Tabaqui, quietly. “ Ye can 
hear Shere Khan below in the thickets. I 
might have saved myself the message.” 

Father Wolf listened, and in the dark val¬ 
ley that ran down to a little river, he heard 
the dry, angry, snarly, singsong whine of a 
tiger who has caught nothing and does not 
care if all the jungle knows it. 

“ The fool! ” said Father Wolf. ‘‘ To be¬ 
gin a night’s work with that noise! Does he 
think that our buck are like his fat Wain- 
gunga bullocks ? ” 

“H’sh! It is neither bullock nor buck 
that he hunts to-night,” said Mother Wolf; 
“ it is Man.” The whine had changed to a 
sort of humming purr that seemed to roll 
from every quarter of the compass. It was 
the noise that bewilders wood-cutters, and 
gipsies sleeping in the open, and makes them 
run sometimes into the very mouth of the 
tiger. 

“Man!” said Father Wolf, showing all 





8 


THE JUNGLE BOOK 


his white teeth. ‘‘ Faugh! Are there not 
enough beetles and frogs in the tanks that he 
must eat Man — and on our ground too! ” 
The Law of the Jungle, which never orders 
anything without a reason, forbids every beast 
to eat Man except when he is killing to show 
his children how to kill, and then he must 
hunt outside the hunting-grounds of his pack 
or tribe. The real reason for this is that 
man-killing means, sooner or later, the ar¬ 
rival of white men on elephants, with guns, 
and hundreds of brown men with gongs and 
rockets and torches. Then everybody in the 
jungle suffers. The reason the beasts give 
among themselves is that Man is the weakest 
and most defenseless of all living things, and 
it is unsportsmanlike to touch him. They say 
too — and it is true — that man-eaters be¬ 
come mangy, and lose their teeth. 

The purr grew louder, and ended in the 
full-throated “ Aaarh! ” of the tiger’s charge. 

Then there was a howl — an untigerish 



MOWGLI’S BROTHERS 9 


howl — from Shere Khan. “He has miss¬ 
ed,” said Mother Wolf. “ What is it.? ” 
Father Wolf ran out a few paces and 
heard Shere Khan muttering and mumbling 
savagely, as he tumbled about in the scrub. 

“ The fool has had no more sense than to 
jump at a wood-cutters’ camp-fire, so he has 
burned his feet,” said Father Wolf, with a 
grunt. “ Tabaqui is with him.” 

“ Something is coming uphill,” said Mother 
Wolf, twitching one ear. “ Get ready.” 

The bushes rustled a little in the thicket, 
and Father Wolf dropped with his haunches 
under him, ready for his leap. Then, if you 
had been watching, you would have seen the 
most wonderful thing in the world — the wolf 
checked in mid-spring. He made his bound 
before he saw what it was he was jumping at, 
and then he tried to stop himself. The re¬ 
sult was that he shot up straight into the air 
for four or five feet, landing almost where he 
left ground. 




10 


THE JUNGLE BOOK 


“ Man! ” he snapped. “ A man’s cub. 
Look!” 

Directly in front of him, holding on by a 
low branch, stood a naked brown baby who 
could just walk — as soft and as dimpled a 
little thing as ever came to a wolf’s cave at 
night. He looked up into Father Wolf’s face 
and laughed. 

“ Is that a man’s cub.?’ ” said Mother Wolf. 
“ I have never seen one. Bring it here.” 

A wolf accustomed to moving his own cubs 
can, if necessary, mouth an egg without 
breaking it, and though Father Wolf’s jaws 
closed right on the child’s back not a tooth 
even scratched the skin, as he laid it down 
among the cubs. 

“ How little! How naked, and — how 
bold! ” said Mother Wolf, softly. The baby 
was pushing his way between the cubs to get 
close to the warm hide. ‘‘ Ahai! He is tak¬ 
ing his meal with the others. And so this is 
a man’s cub. Now, was there ever a wolf 




MOWGLI’S BROTHERS 11 


that could boast of a man’s cub among her 
children? ” 

“ I have heard now and again of such a 
thing, but never in our pack or in my time,” 
said Father Wolf. “ He is altogether with¬ 
out hair, and I could kill him with a touch of 
my foot. But see, he looks up and is not 
afraid.” 

The moonlight was blocked out of the 
mouth of the cave, for Shere Khan’s great 
square head and shoulders were thrust into 
the entrance. Tabaqui, behind him, was 
squeaking: My Lord, my Lord, it went in 
here! ” 

‘‘ Shere Khan does us great honor,” said 
Father Wolf, but his eyes were very angry. 
“ What does Shere Kahn need? ” 

“ My quarry. A man’s cub went this 
way,” said Shere Khan. “ Its parents have 
run off. Give it to me.” 

Shere Khan had jumped at a wood-cutter’s 
camp-fire, as Father Wolf had said, and was 





THE JUNGLE BOOK 


furious from the pain of his burned feet. 
But Father Wolf knew that the mouth of the 
cave was too narrow for a tiger to come in 
by. Even where he was, Shere Kahn’s shoul¬ 
ders and fore paws were cramped for want 
of room, as a man’s would be if he tried to 
fight in a barrel. 

“ The Wolves are a free people,” said 
Father Wolf. “ They take orders from the 
Head of the Pack, and not from any striped 
cattle-killer. The man’s cub is ours — to kill 
if we choose.” 

“Ye choose and ye do not choose! What 
talk is this of choosing.^ By the Bull that 
I killed, am I to stand nosing into your dog’s 
den for my fair dues.? It is I, Shere Khan, 
who speak! ” 

The tiger’s roar filled the cave with thun¬ 
der. Mother Wolf shook herself clear of the 
cubs and sprang forward, her eyes, hke two 
green moons in the darkness, facing the blaz¬ 
ing eyes of Shere Khan. 






'V,, ^ 


MOWGLI’S BROTHERS 13 

“.And it is I, Raksha [the Demon], who 
answer. The man’s cub is mine, Lungri — 
mine to me! He shall not be killed. He 
shall live to run with the Pack and to hunt 
with the Pack; and in the end, look you, 
hunter of little naked cubs — frog-eater 
— fish-killer, he shall hunt thee! Now 
get hence, or by the Sambhur that I killed 
(7 eat no starved cattle), back thou goest 
to thy mother, burned beast of the jungle, 
lamer than ever thou earnest into the world! 
Go!” 

Father Wolf looked on amazed. He had 
almost forgotten the days when he won 
Mother Wolf in fair fight from five other 
wolves, when she ran in the Pack and was not 
called the Demon for Compliment’s sake. 
Shere Khan might have faced Father Wolf, 
but he could not stand up against Mother 
Wolf, for he knew that where he was she had 
all the advantage of the ground, and would 
fight to the death. So he backed out of the 





14 


THE JUNGLE BOOK 


cave-mouth growling, and when he was clear 
he shouted: 

“ Each dog barks in his own yard! We 
will see what the Pack will say to this foster¬ 
ing of man-cubs. The cub is mine, and to 
my teeth he will come in the end, O bush¬ 
tailed thieves! ” 

Mother Wolf threw herself down panting 
among the cubs, and Father Wolf said to her 
gravely: 

“ Shere Kahn speaks this much truth. 
The cub must be shown to the Pack. Wilt 
thou still keep him. Mother? ” 

“ Keep him! ” she gasped. “ He came 
naked, by night, alone and very hungry; yet 
he was not afraid! Look, he has pushed one 
of my babes to one side already. And that 
lame butcher would have killed him, and would 
have run off to the Waingunga while the vil¬ 
lagers here hunted through all our lairs in 
revenge I Keep him ? Assuredly I will keep 
him. Lie still, little frog. O thou Mowgli, 




MOWGLI’S BROTHERS 15 


— for Mowgli, the Frog, I will call thee,— 
the time will come when thou wilt hunt Shere 
Khan as he has hunted thee! ” 

“ But what will our Pack say ? ” said 
Father Wolf. 

The Law of the Jungle lays down very 
clearly that any wolf may, when he marries, 
withdraw from the Pack he belongs to; but 
as soon as his cubs are old enough to stand 
on their feet he must bring them to the Pack 
Council, which is generally held once a month 
at full moon, in order that the other wolves 
may identify them. After that inspection 
the cubs are free to run where they please, 
and until they have killed their first buck 
no excuse is accepted if a grown wolf of the 
Pack kills one of them. The punishment is 
death where the murderer can be found; and 
if you think for a minute you will see that 
this must be so. 

Father Wolf waited till his cubs could run 
a little, and then on the night of the Pack 





16 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


Meeting took them and Mowgli and Mother 
Wolf to the Council Rock — a hilltop covered 
with stones and boulders where a hundred 
wolves could hide. Akela, the great gray 
Lone Wolf, who led all the Pack by strength 
and cunning, lay out at full length on his 
rock, and below him sat forty or more wolves 
of every size and color, from badger-colored 
veterans who could handle a buck alone, to 
young black three-year-olds who thought they 
could. The Lone Wolf had led them for a 
year now. He had fallen twice into a wolf- 
trap in his youth, and once he had been beaten 
and left for dead; so he knew the manners 
and customs of men. 

There was very little talking at the Rock. 
The cubs tumbled over one another in the 
center of the circle where their mothers and 
fathers sat, and now and again a senior wolf 
would go quietly up to a cub, look at him 
carefully, and return to his place on noise¬ 
less feet. Sometimes a mother would push 




THE ‘council rock’ 
















MOWGLI’S BROTHERS 17 


her cub far out into the moonlight, to be 
sure that he had not been overlooked. Akela 
from his rock would cry: “Ye know the 
Law — ye know the Law! Look well, O 
Wolves!” And the anxious mothers would 
take up the call: “ Look — look well, O 

Wolves! ” 

At last —■ and Mother Wolf’s neck-bristles 
lifted as the time came — Father Wolf pushed 
“ Mowgli, the Frog,” as they called him, into 
the center, where he sat laughing and playing 
with some pebbles that glistened in the moon- 
light. 

Akela never raised his head from his paws, 
but went on with the monotonous cry, “ Look 
well! ” A muffled roar came up from behind 
the rocks — the voice of Shere Khan crying, 
“ The cub is mine; give him to me. What 
have the Free People to do with a man’s 
cub ? ” 

Akela never even twitched his ears. All 
he said was, “ Look well, O Wolves! What 





have the Free People to do with the orders 
of any save the Free People ? Look well! ” 

There was a chorus of deep growls, and a 
young wolf in his fourth year flung back 
Shere Khan’s question to Akela: “ What 
have the Free People to do with a man’s 
cub? ” 

Now the Law of the Jungle lays down that 
if there is any dispute as to the right of a 
cub to be accepted by the Pack, he must be 
spoken for by at least two members of the 
Pack who are not his father and mother. 

“ Who speaks for this cub ? ” said Akela. 
“ Among the Free People, who speaks ? ” 
There was no answer, and Mother Wolf got 
ready for what she knew would be her last 
fight, if things came to fighting. 

Then the only other creature who is al¬ 
lowed at the Pack Council — Baloo, the 
sleepy brown bear who teaches the wolf cubs 
the Law of the Jungle; old Baloo, who can 
come and go where he pleases because he 






MOWGLI’S BROTHERS 19 


eats only nuts and roots and honey — rose 
up on his hind quarters and grunted. 

‘‘ The man’s cub — the man’s cub ? ” he 
said. “ I speak for the man’s cub. There 
is no harm in a man’s cub. I have no gift 
of words, but I speak the truth. Let him 
run with the Pack, and be entered with the 
others. I myself will teach him.” 

“We need yet another,” said Akela. “ Ba- 
loo has spoken, and he is our teacher for the 
young cubs. Who speaks besides Baloo.^ ” 

A black shadow dropped down into the 
circle. It was Bagheera, the Black Panther, 
inky black all over, but with the panther 
markings showing up in certain lights like 
the pattern of watered silk. Everybody 
knew Bagheera, and nobody cared to cross 
his path; for he was as cunning as Tabaqui, 
as bold as the wild buffalo, and as reckless as 
the wounded elephant. But he had a voice 
as soft as wild honey dripping from a tree, 
and a skin softer than down. 



20 


THE JUNGLE BOOK 


“ O Akela, and ye, the Free People,” he 
purred, “ I have no right in your assembly; 
but the Law of the Jungle says that if there 
is a doubt which is not a killing matter in 
regard to a new cub, the life of that cub may 
be bought at a price. And the Law does not 
say who may or may not pay that price. 
Am I right ? ” 

“ Good! good! ” said the young wolves, 
who are always hungry. ‘‘ Listen to Bag- 
heera. The cub can be bought for a price. 
It is the Law.” 

‘‘ Knowing that I have no right to speak 
here, I ask your leave.” 

Speak then,” cried twenty voices. 

‘‘To kill a naked cub is shame. Besides, 
he may make better sport for you when he 
is grown. Baloo has spoken in his behalf. 
Now to Baloo’s word I will add one bull, and 
a fat one, newly killed, not half a mile from 
here, if ye will accept the man’s cub accord¬ 
ing to the Law. Is it difficult? ” 



MOWGLI’S BROTHERS 21 


There was a clamor of scores of voices, 
saying: ‘‘ What matter? He will die in the 
winter rains. He will scorch in the sun. 
What harm can a naked frog do us? Let 
him run with the Pack. Where is the bull, 
Bagheera? Let him be accepted.” And 
then came Akela’s deep bay, crying: “ Look 
well — look well, O Wolves! ” 

Mowgli was still playing with the pebbles, 
and he did not notice when the wolves came 
and looked at him one by one. At last they 
all went down the hill for the dead bull, and 
only Akela, Bagheera, Baloo, and Mowgli’s 
own wolves were left. Shere Khan roared 
still in the night, for he was very angry 
that Mowgli had not been handed over to 
him. 

‘‘ Ay, roar well,” said Bagheera, under his 
whiskers; “ for the time comes when this 
naked thing will make thee roar to another 
tune, or I know nothing of Man.” 

It was well done,” said Akela. Men 




22 


THE JUNGLE BOOK 


and their cubs are very wise. He may be a 
help in time.” 

‘‘ Truly, a help in time of need; for none 
can hope to lead the Pack forever,” said Bag- 
heera. 

Akela said nothing. He was thinking of 
the time that comes to every leader of every 
pack when his strength goes from him and 
he gets feebler and feebler, till at last he is 
killed by the wolves and a new leader comes 
up — to be killed in his turn. 

“ Take him away,” he said to Father Wolf, 
“ and train him as befits one of the Free 
People.” 

And that is how Mowgli was entered into 
the Seeonee wolf-pack for the price of a bull 
and on Baloo’s good word. 

Now you must be content to skip ten or 
eleven whole years, and only guess at all the 
wonderful life that Mowgli led among the 
wolves, because if it were written out it would 
fill ever so many books. He grew up with the 




MOWGLI’S BROTHERS 2S 


cubs, though they of course were grown wolves 
almost before he was a child, and Father 
Wolf taught him his business, and the mean¬ 
ing of things in the jungle, till every rustle 
in the grass, every breath of the warm night 
air, every note of' the owls above his head, 
every scratch of a bat’s claws as it roosted 
for a while in a tree, and every splash of 
every little fish jumping in a pool, meant 
just as much to him as the work of his office 
means to a business man. When he was not 
learning he sat out in the sun and slept, and 
ate, and went to sleep again; when he felt 
dirty or hot he swam in the forest pools; and 
when he wanted honey (Baloo told him that 
honey and nuts were just as pleasant to eat 
as raw meat) he climbed up for it, and that 
Bagheera showed him how to do. 

Bagheera would lie out on a branch and 
call, ‘‘ Come along. Little Brother,” and at 
first Mowgli would cling like the sloth, but 
afterward he would fling himself through the 





24i 


THE JUNGLE BOOK 


branches almost as boldly as the gray ape. 
He took his place at the Council Rock, too, 
when the Pack met, and there he discovered 
that if he stared hard at any wolf, the wolf 
would be forced to drop his eyes, and so he 
used to stare for fun. 

At other times he would pick the long 
thorns out of the pads of his friends, for 
wolves suffer terribly from thorns and burs 
in their coats. He would go down the hill¬ 
side into the cultivated lands by night, and 
look very curiously at the villagers in their 
huts, but he had a mistrust of men because 
Bagheera showed him a square box with a 
drop-gate so cunningly hidden in the jungle 
that he nearly walked into it, and told him 
it was a trap. 

He loved better than anything else to go 
with Bagheera into the dark warm heart of 
the forest, to sleep all through the drowsy 
day, and at night see how Bagheera did his 
killing. Bagheera killed right and left as 



MOWGLI’S BROTHERS 25 


he felt hungry, and so did Mowgli — with 
one exception. As soon as he was old enough 
to understand things, Bagheera told him that 
he must never touch cattle because he had 
been bought into the Pack at the price of 
a bull’s life. “ All the jungle is thine,” said 
Bagheera, “ and thou canst kill everything 
that thou art strong enough to kill; but for 
the sake of the bull that bought thee thou 
must never kill or eat any cattle young or 
old. That is the Law of the Jungle.” Mow¬ 
gli obeyed faithfully. 

And he grew and grew strong as a boy 
must grow who does not know that he is 
learning any lessons, and who has nothing in 
the world to think of except things to eat. 

Mother Wolf told him once or twice that 
Shere Khan was not a creature to be trusted, 
and that some day he must kill Shere Khan; 
but though a young wolf would have remem¬ 
bered that advice every hour, Mowgli forgot 
it because he was only a boy — though he 






26 


THE JUNGLE BOOK 


would have called himself a wolf if he had 
been able to speak in any human tongue. 

Shere Khan was always crossing his path 
in the jungle, for as Akela grew older and 
feebler the lame tiger had come to be great 
friends with the younger wolves of the Pack, 
who followed him for scraps, a thing Akela 
would never have allowed if he had dared to 
push his authority to the proper bounds. 
Then Shere Khan would flatter them and 
wonder that such fine young hunters were 
content to be led by a dying wolf and a man’s 
cub. “ They tell me,” Shere Khan would 
say, “ that at Council ye dare not look him 
between the eyes ”; and the young wolves 
would growl and bristle. 

Bagheera, who had eyes and ears every¬ 
where, knew something of this, and once or 
twice he told Mowgli in so many words that 
Shere Khan would kill him some day; and 
Mowgli would laugh and answer: “ I have 

the Pack and I have thee; and Baloo, though 



MOWGLI’S BROTHERS 27 


he is so lazy, might strike a blow or two for 
my sake. Why should I be afraid? ” 

It was one very warm day that a new no¬ 
tion came to Bagheera — born of something 
that he had heard. Perhaps Ikki, the Por¬ 
cupine, had told him; but he said to Mowgli 
when they were deep in the jungle, as the 
boy lay with his head on Bagheera’s beautiful 
black skin: “ Little Brother, how often 

have I told thee that Shere Khan is thy en¬ 
emy ? ” 

“ As many times as there are nuts on that 
palm,” said Mowgli, who, naturally, could 
not count. ‘‘ What of it ? I am sleepy, Bag¬ 
heera, and Shere Khan is all long tail and 
loud talk, like Mao, the Peacock.” 

But this is no time for sleeping. Baloo 
knows it, I know it, the Pack know it, and 
even the foolish, foolish deer know. Tabaqui 
has told thee too.” 

“ Ho! ho! ” said Mowgli. “ Tabaqui came 
to me not long ago with some rude talk that 



28 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


I was a naked man’s cub, and not fit to dig 
pig-nuts; but I caught Tabaqui by the tail 
and swung him twice against a palm-tree to 
teach him better manners.” 

“ That was foolishness; for though Taba¬ 
qui is a mischief-maker, he would have told 
thee of something that concerned thee closely. 
Open those eyes. Little Brother! Shere 
Khan dares not kill thee in the jungle for 
fear of those that love thee; but remember, 
Akela is very old, and soon the day comes 
when he cannot kill his buck, and then he 
will be leader no more. Many of the wolves 
that looked thee over when thou wast brought 
to the Council first are old too, and the young 
wolves believe, as Shere Khan has taught 
them, that a man-cub has no place with the 
Pack. In a little time thou wilt be a man.” 

“ And what is a man that he should not 
run with his brothers ? ” said Mowgli. “ I 
was born in the jungle; I have obeyed the Law 
of the Jungle; and there is no wolf of ours 




MOWGLI’S BROTHERS 29 


from whose paws I have not pulled a thorn. 
Surely they are my brothers! ” 

Bagheera stretched himself at full length 
and half shut his eyes. “ Little Brother,” 
said he, “ feel under my jaw.” 

Mowgli put up his strong brown hand, and 
just under Bagheera’s silky chin, where the 
giant rolling muscles were all hid by the 
glossy hair, he came upon a little bald 
spot. 

“ There is no one in the jungle that knows 
that I, Bagheera, carry that mark — the 
mark of the collar; and yet. Little Brother, 
I was bom among men, and it was among 
men that my mother died — in the cages of 
the King’s Palace at Oodeypore. It was be¬ 
cause of this that I paid the price for thee 
at the Council when thou wast a little naked 
cub. Yes, I too was bom among men. I 
had never seen the jungle. They fed me 
behind bars from an iron pan till one night 
I felt that I was Bagheera, the Panther, and 


I 



30 


THE JUNGLE BOOK 


no man’s plaything, and I broke the silly lock 
with one blow of my paw, and came away; 
and because I had learned the ways of men, I 
became more terrible in the jungle than Shere 
Khan. Is it not so ? ” 

“Yes,” said Mowgli; “all the jungle fear 
Bagheera — all except Mowgli.” 

“ Oh, thou art a man’s cub,” said the Black 
Panther, very tenderly; “ and even as I re¬ 
turned to my jungle, so thou must go back 
to men at last,— to the men who are thy 
brothers,— if thou art not killed in the Coun¬ 
cil.” 

“ But why — but why should any wish to 
kill me?” said Mowgli. 

“ Look at me,” said Bagheera; and Mowgli 
looked at him steadily between the eyes. 
The big panther turned his head away in half 
a minute. 

“ That is why,” he said, shifting his paw 
on the leaves. “ Not even I can look thee be¬ 
tween the eyes, and I was born among men. 






MOWGLI’S BROTHERS 31 


and I love thee, Little Brother. The others 
they hate thee because their eyes cannot meet 
thine; because thou art wise; because thou 
hast pulled out thorns from their feet — be¬ 
cause thou art a man.” 

I did not know these things,” said Mow- 
gli, sullenly; and he frowned under his heavy 
black eyebrows. 

“ What is the Law of the Jungle.? Strike 
first and then give tongue. By thy very care¬ 
lessness they know that thou art a man. But 
be wise. It is in my heart that when Akela 
misses his next kill,— and at each hunt it costs 
him more to pin the buck,— the Pack will turn 
against him and against thee. They will hold 
a jungle Council at the Rock, and then — 
and then ... I have it! ” said Bagheera, 
leaping up. “ Go thou down quickly to the 
men’s huts in the valley, and take some of 
the Red Flower which they grow there, so 
that when the time comes thou mayest have 
even a stronger friend than I or Baloo or 



32 


THE JUNGLE BOOK 


those of the Pack that love thee. Get the 
Red Flower.” 

By Red Flower Bagheera meant fire, only 
no creature in the jungle will call fire by 
its proper name. Every beast lives in deadly 
fear of it, and invents a hundred ways of 
describing it. 

The Red Flower? ” said Mowgli. “ That 
grows outside their huts in the twilight. I 
will get some.” 

“ There speaks the man’s cub,” said Bag¬ 
heera, proudly. “ Remember that it grows in 
little pots. Get one swiftly, and keep it by 
thee for time of need.” 

‘‘ Good! ” said Mowgli. I go. But art 
thou sure, O my Bagheera ”— he slipped his 
arm round the splendid neck, and looked deep 
into the big eyes —art thou sure that all 
this is Shere Khan’s doing? ” 

“ By the Broken Lock that freed me, I am 
sure. Little Brother.” 

“ Then, by the Bull that bought me, I will 







X: 





MOWGLI’S BROTHERS S3 


pay Shere Khan full tale for this, and it may 
be a little over,” said Mowgli; and he bounded 
away. 

“ That is a man. That is all a man,” said 
Bagheera to himself, lying down again. 
‘‘ Oh, Shere Khan, never was a blacker hunt¬ 
ing than that frog-hunt of thine ten years 
ago! ” 

Mowgli was far and far through the for¬ 
est, running hard, and his heart was hot in 
him. He came to the cave as the evening 
mist rose, and drew breath, and looked down 
the valley. The cubs were out, but Mother 
Wolf, at the back of the cave, knew by his 
breathing that something was troubling her 
frog. 

“ What is it. Son? ” she said. 

“ Some bat’s chatter of Shere Khan,” he 
called back. “ I hunt among the plowed 
fields to-night ”; and he plunged downward 
through the bushes, to the stream at the bot¬ 
tom of the valley. There he checked, for he 




/ 


34 THE JUNGLE BOOK 

heard the yell of the Pack hunting, heard 
the bellow of a hunted Sambhur, and the snort 
as the buck turned at bay. Then there were 
wicked, bitter howls from the young wolves: 
“Akela! Akela! Let the Lone Wolf show 
his strength. Room for the leader of our 
Pack! Spring, Akela! ” 

The Lone Wolf must have sprung and 
missed his hold, for Mowgli heard the snap 
of his teeth and then a yelp as the Sambhur 
knocked him over with his fore foot. 

He did not wait for anything more, but 
dashed on; and the yells grew fainter behind 
him as he ran into the crop-lands where the 
villagers lived. 

“ Bagheera spoke truth,” he panted, as he 
nestled down in some cattle-fodder by the win¬ 
dow of a hut. ‘‘ To-morrow is one day for 
Akela and for me.” 

Then he pressed his face close to the win¬ 
dow and watched the fire on the hearth. He 
saw the husbandman’s wife get up and feed 



MOWGLI’S BROTHERS 35 


it in the night with black lumps; and when 
the morning came and the mists were all white 
and cold, he saw the man’s child pick up a 
wicker pot plastered Inside with earth, fill it 
with lumps of red-hot charcoal, put it under 
his blanket, and go out to tend the cows in 
the byre. 

‘‘Is that all?” said Mowgli. “If a cub 
can do it, there is nothing to fear ”; so he 
strode around the comer and met the boy, 
took the pot from his hand, and disappeared 
into the mist while the boy howled with 
fear. 

“ They are very like me,” said Mowgli, 
blowing into the pot, as he had seen the 
woman do. “ This thing will die if I do not 
give it things to eat ”; and he dropped twigs 
and dried bark on the red stuff. Half-way 
up the hill he met Bagheera with the morning 
dew shining like moonstones on his coat. 

“ Akela has missed,” said the panther. 
“ They would have killed him last night, but 





36 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


they needed thee also. They were looking 
for thee on the hill.” 

“ I was among the plowed lands. I am 
ready. Look! ” Mowgli held up the fire- 
pot. 

“ Good! Now, I have seen men thrust a 
dry branch into that stuff, and presently the 
Red Flower blossomed at the end of it. Art 
thou not afraid.^ ” 

“ No. Why should I fear.'’ I remember 
now — if it is not a dream — how, before I 
was a wolf, I lay beside the Red Flower, and 
it was warm and pleasant.” 

All that day Mowgli sat in the cave tending 
his fire-pot and dipping dry branches into 
it to see how they looked. He found a branch 
that satisfied him, and in the evening when 
Tabaqui came to the cave and told him, rudely 
enough, that he was wanted at the Council 
Rock, he laughed till Tabaqui ran away. 
Then Mowgli went to the Council, still laugh¬ 
ing. 




> 


MOWGM AND BAGHEERA 












I 


*• 



MOWGLI’S BROTHERS 37 


Akela the Lone Wolf lay by the side of 
his rock as a sign that the leadership of the 
Pack was open, and Shere Khan with his 
following of scrap-fed wolves walked to and 
fro openly, being flattered. Bagheera lay 
close to Mowgli, and the fire-pot was between 
Mowgli’s knees. When they were all gath¬ 
ered together, Shere Khan began to speak — 
a thing he would never have dared to do when 
Akela was in his prime. 

“ He has no right,” whispered Bagheera. 
“ Say so. He is a dog’s son. He will be 
frightened.” 

Mowgli sprang to his feet. ‘‘ Free Peo¬ 
ple,” he cried, “ does Shere Khan lead the 
Pack.f^ What has a tiger to do with our 
leadership ? ” 

“ Seeing that the leadership is yet open, 
and being asked to speak—” Shere Khan 
began. 

“ By whom.?^ ” said Mowgli. “ Are we all 
jackals, to fawn on this cattle-butcher.? The 





38 


THE JUNGLE BOOK 


leadership of the Pack is with the Pack 
alone.” 

There were yells of “ Silence, thou man’s 
cub! ” “ Let him speak; he has kept our 

law! ” And at last the seniors of the Pack 
thundered: “Let the Dead Wolf speak!” 

When a leader of the Pack has missed his 
kill, he is called the Dead Wolf as long as 
he lives, which is not long, as a rule. 

Akela raised his old head wearily: 

“ Free People, and ye too, jackals of Shere 
Khan, for twelve seasons I have led ye to and 
from the kill, and in all that time not one has 
been trapped or maimed. Now I have missed 
my kill. Ye know how that plot was made. 
Ye know how ye brought me up to an untried 
buck to make my weakness known. It was 
cleverly done. Your right is to kill me here 
on the Council Rock now. Therefore I ask, 

‘ Who comes to make an end of the Lone 
Wolf ’ For it is my right, by the Law of 
the Jungle, that ye come one by one.” 






MOWGLI’S BROTHERS 39 


There was a long hush, for no single wolf 
cared to fight Akela to the death. Then Shere 
Khan roared: “Bah! What have we to 
do with this toothless fool.?^ He is doomed 
to die! It is the man-cub who has lived too 
long. Free People, he was my meat from the 
first. Give him to me. I am weary of this 
man-wolf folly. He has troubled the jungle 
for ten seasons. Give me the man-cub, or 
I will hunt here always, and not give you 
one bone! He is a man — a man’s child, 
and from the marrow of my bones I hate 
him! ” 

Then more than half the Pack yelled: “ A 

man — a man! What has a man to do with 
us.'^ Let him go to his own place.” 

“ And turn all the people of the villages 
against us.^” snarled Shere Khan. “No; 
give him to me. He is a man, and none of us 
can look him between the eyes.” 

Akela lifted his head again, and said: 
“ He has eaten our food; he has slept with 



40 


THE JUNGLE BOOK 


us; he has driven game for us; he has broken 
no word of the Law of the Jungle.” 

Also, I paid for him with a bull when 
he was accepted. The worth of a bull is little, 
but Bagheera’s honor is something that he 
will perhaps fight for,” said Bagheera in his 
gentlest voice. 

‘‘ A bull paid ten years ago! ” the Pack 
snarled. “ What do we care for bones ten 
years old.^ ” 

“ Or for a pledge ? ” said Bagheera, his 
white teeth bared under his lip. “ Well are 
ye called the Free People! ” 

“No man’s cub can run with the people 
of the jungle! ” roared Shere Khan. “ Give 
him to me.” 

“ He is our brother in all but blood,” Akela 
went on; “ and ye would kill him here. In 
truth, I have lived too long. Some of ye are 
eaters of cattle, and of others I have heard 
that, under Shere Khan’s teaching, ye go by 
dark night and snatch children from the vil- 

' ■ - ^ H 





MOWGLI’S BROTHERS 4^1 


\ 


lager’s doorstep. Therefore I know ye to be 
cowards, and it is to cowards I speak. It is 
certain that I must die, and my life is of no 
worth, or I would offer that in the man-cub’s 
place. But for the sake of the Honor of the 
Pack,— a little matter that, by being without 
a leader, ye have forgotten,— I promise that 
if ye let the man-cub go to his own place, I 
will not, when my time comes to die, bare 
one tooth against ye. I will die without fight¬ 
ing. That will at least save the Pack three 
lives. More I cannot do; but, if ye will, 
I can save ye the shame that comes of 
killing a brother against whom there is no 
fault — a brother spoken for and bought 
into the Pack according to the Law of the 
Jungle.” 

“ He is a man — a man — a man! ” 
snarled the Pack; and most of the wolves be¬ 
gan to gather round Shere Khan, whose tail 
was beginning to switch. 

“ Now the business is in thy hands,” said 




42 


THE JUNGLE BOOK 


Bagheera to Mowgli. “ We can do no more 
except fight.” 

Mowgli stood upright — the fire-pot in his 
hands. Then he stretched out his arms, and 
yawned in the face of the Council; but he was 
furious with rage and sorrow, for, wolf-like, 
the wolves had never told him how they hated 
him. 

“ Listen, you! ” he cried. “ There is no 
need for this dog’s jabber. Ye have told me 
so often to-night that I am a man (though 
indeed I would have been a wolf with you to 
my life’s end) that I feel your words are true. 
So I do not call ye my brothers any more, 
but sag [dogs], as a man should. What ye 
will do, and what ye will not do, is not yours 
to say. That matter is with me; and that 
we may see the matter more plainly, I, the 
man, have brought here a little of the Red 
Flower which ye, dogs, fear.” 

He flung the fire-pot on the ground, and 
some of the red coals lit a tuft of dried moss 




MOWGLI’S BROTHERS 43 


that flared up as all the Council drew back in 
terror before the leaping flames. 

Mowgli thrust his dead branch into the 
fire till the twigs lit and crackled, and whirled 
it above his head among the cowering 
wolves. 

“ Thou art the master,” said Bagheera, in 
an undertone. ‘‘ Save Akela from the death. 
He was ever thy friend.” 

Akela, the grim old wolf who had never 
asked for mercy in his life, gave one piteous 
look at Mowgli as the boy stood all naked, 
his long black hair tossing over his shoulders 
in the light of the blazing branch that made 
the shadows jump and quiver. 

‘‘ Good! ” said Mowgli, staring around 
slowly, and thrusting out his lower lip. ‘‘ I 
see that ye are dogs. I go from you to my 
own people — if they be my own people. 
The jungle is shut to me, and I must forget 
your talk and your companionship; but I will 
be more merciful than ye are. Because I was 


{ 



44 


THE JUNGLE BOOK 


all but your brother in blood, I promise that 
when I am a man among men I will not betray 
ye to men as ye have betrayed me,” He 
kicked the fire with his foot, and the sparks 
flew up. ‘‘ There shall be no war between 
any of us and the Pack. But here is a debt 
to pay before I go.” He strode forward to 
where Shere Khan sat blinking stupidly at 
the flames, and caught him by the tuft on his 
chin. Bagheera followed close, in case of ac¬ 
cidents. ‘‘Up, dog!” Mowgli cried. “Up, 
when a man speaks, or I will set that coat 
ablaze! ” 

Shere Khan’s ears lay flat back on his head, 
and he shut his eyes, for the blazing branch 
was very near. 

“ This cattle-killer said he would kill me in 
the Council because he had not killed me 
when I was a cub. Thus and thus, then, do 
we beat dogs when we are men! Stir a whis¬ 
ker, Lungri, and I ram the Red Flower down 
thy gullet I ” He beat Shere Khan over the 



MOWGLI’S BROTHERS 45 


head with the branch, and the tiger whimpered 
and whined in an agony of fear. 

‘‘ Pah! Singed jungle-cat — go now! But 
remember when next I come to the Council 
Rock, as a man should come, it will be with 
Shere Khan’s hide on my head. For the rest, 
Akela goes free to live as he pleases. Ye will 
not kill him, because that is not my will. Nor 
do I think that ye will sit here any longer, 
lolling out your tongues as though ye were 
somebodies, instead of dogs whom I drive out 
— thus! Go!” 

The fire was burning furiously at the end 
of the branch, and Mowgli struck right and 
left round the circle, and the wolves ran howl¬ 
ing with the sparks burning their fur. At 
last there were only Akela, Bagheera, and 
perhaps ten wolves that had taken Mowgli’s 
part. Then something began to hurt Mow¬ 
gli inside him, as he had never been hurt 
in his life before, and he caught his breath 
and sobbed, and the tears ran down his face. 



46 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


“ What is it ? What is it ? ” he said. ‘‘ I 
do not wish to leave the jungle, and I do not 
know what this is. Am I dying, Bagheera.? ” 
‘‘ No, Little Brother. Those are only 
tears such .as men use,” said Bagheera. 
“ Now I know thou art a man, and a man’s 
cub no longer. The jungle is shut indeed 
to thee henceforward. Let them fall, Mow- 
gli; they are only tears.” So Mowgli sat 
and cried as though his heart would break; 
and he had never cried in all his life before. 

“ Now,” he said, “ I will go to men. But 
first I must say farewell to my mother ”; 
and he went to the cave where she lived with 
Father Wolf, and he cried on her coat, while 
the four cubs howled miserably. 

“ Ye will not forget me? ” said Mowgli. 

“ Never while we can follow a trail,” said 
the cubs. “ Come to the foot of the hill when 
thou art a man, and we will talk to thee; and 
we will come into the crop-lands to play 
with thee by night.” 



■Vi' 






MOWGLl LEAVING THE JUNGLE 











I 

i » 

i 

MOWGLI’S BROTHERS 47 

‘‘Come soon!” said Father Wolf. “Oh, 
wise little Frog, come again soon; for we be 
old, thy mother and I.” 

“ Come soon,” said Mother Wolf, “ little 
naked son of mine; for, listen, child of man, 
I loved thee more than ever I loved my cubs.” 

“ I will surely come,” said Mowgli; “ and 
when I come it will be to lay out Shere Khan’s 
hide upon the Council Rock. Do not forget 
me! Tell them in the jungle never to forget 
me I ” 

The dawn was beginning to break when 
Mowgli went down the hillside alone to the 
crops to meet those mysterious things that are 
called men. 




48 


THE JUNGLE BOOK 


HUNTING-SONG OF THE SEEONEE 
PACK 

As the dawn was breaking the Sambhur belled 
Once, twice, and again! 

And a doe leaped up — and a doe leaped up 
From the pond in the wood where the wild deer 
sup. 

This I, scouting alone, beheld. 

Once, twice, and again! 

As the dawn was breaking the Sambhur belled 
Once, twice, and again! 

And a wolf stole back — and a wolf stole back 
To carry the word to the waiting Pack; 

And we sought and we found and we bayed on 
his track 

Once, twice, and again! 

As the dawn was breaking the Wolf-pack yelled 
Once, twice, and again! 

Feet in the jungle that leave no mark! 

Eyes that can see in the dark — the dark! 
Tongue — give tongue to it! Hark! O Hark! 
Once, twice, and again! 




KAA’S HUNTING 



His spots are the joy of the Leopard: his horns are 
the Buffalo’s pride — 

Be clean, for the strength of the hunter is known by 
the gloss of his hide. 

If ye find that the Bullock can toss you, or the heavy- 
browed Sambhur can gore; 

Ye need not stop work to inform us: we knew it ten 
seasons before. 

Oppress not the cubs of the stranger, but hail them 
as Sister and Brother, 

For though they are little and fubsy, it may be the 
Bear is their mother. 

“ There is none like to me! ” says the Cub in the pride 
of his earliest kill; 

But the Jungle is large and the Cub he is small. Let 
him think and be still. 


Maxims of Baloo. 




KAA’S HUNTING 


A ll that IS told here happened some 
time before Mowgli was turned out of 
the Seeonee wolf-pack. It was in the days 
when Baloo was teaching him the Law of the 
Jungle. The big, serious, old brown bear 
was delighted to have so quick a pupil, for 
the young wolves will only learn as much of 
the Law of the Jungle as applies to their own 
pack and tribe, and run away as soon as they 
can repeat the Hunting Verse: “Feet that 
make no noise; eyes that can see in the dark; 
ears that can hear the winds in their lairs, 
and sharp white teeth — all these things are 
the marks of our brothers except Tabaqui 
51 







52 


THE JUNGLE BOOK 


and the Hyena, whom we hate.” But Mow- 
gli, as a man-cub, had to leam a great deal 
more than this. Sometimes Bagheera, the 
Black Panther, would come lounging through 
the jungle to see how his pet was getting on, 
and would purr with his head against a tree 
while Mowgli recited the day’s lesson to 
Baloo. The boy could climb almost as well 
as he could swim, and swim almost as well as 
he could run; so Baloo, the Teacher of the 
Law, taught him the Wood and Water laws: 
how to tell a rotten branch from a sound one; 
how to speak politely to the wild bees when 
he came upon a hive of them fifty feet above¬ 
ground ; what to say to Mang, the Bat, when 
he disturbed him in the branches at midday; 
and how to warn the water-snakes in the pools 
before he splashed down among them. None 
of the Jungle People like being disturbed, 
and all are very ready to fly at an intruder. 
Then, too, Mowgli was taught the Strangers’ 
Hunting Call, which must be repeated aloud 




KAA’S HUNTING 


53 


till it is answered, whenever one of the Jungle 
People hunts outside his own grounds. It 
means, translated: “ Give me leave to hunt 

here because I am hungry ”; and the answer 
is: “ Hunt, then, for food, but not for pleas¬ 

ure.” 

All this will show you how much Mowgli 
had to learn by heart, and he grew very tired 
of repeating the same thing a hundred times; 
but, as Baloo said to Bagheera one day when 
Mowgli had been cuffed and had run off in a 
temper: “ A man’s cub is a man’s cub, and 

he must learn all the Law of the Jungle.” 

“ But think how small he is,” said the 
Black Panther, who would have spoiled Mow¬ 
gli if he had had his own way. “ How can 
his little head carry all thy long talk? ” 

“ Is there anything in the jungle too little 
to be killed? No. That is why I teach him 
these things, and that is why I hit him, very 
softly, when he forgets.” 

“ Softly! What dost thou know of soft- 




54 


THE JUNGLE BOOK 


ness, old Iron-feet? ” Bagheera grunted. 
“ His face is all bruised to-day by thy — 
softness. Ugh! ” 

“ Better he should be bruised from head 
to foot by me who love him than that he 
should come to harm through ignorance,” 
Baloo answered, very earnestly. ‘‘ I am now 
teaching him the Master Words of the Jungle 
that shall protect him with the Birds and the 
Snake People, and all that hunt on four feet, 
except his own pack. He can now claim pro¬ 
tection, if he will only remember the Words, 
from all in the jungle. Is not that worth a 
little beating? ” 

‘‘ Well, look to it then that thou dost not 
kill the man-cub. He is no tree-trunk to 
sharpen thy blunt claws upon. But what 
are those Master Words? I am more likely 
to give help than to ask it”—Bagheera 
stretched out one paw and admired the steel- 
blue ripping-chisel talons at the end of it — 

Still I should like to know.” 








V' 


KAA’S HUNTING 55 

“ I will call Mowgli and he shall say them 

— if he will. Come, Little Brother! ” 

“ My head is ringing like a bee-tree,” said 
a sullen voice over their heads, and Mowgli 
slid down a tree-trunk, very angry and indig¬ 
nant, adding, as he reached the ground: “ I 

come for Bagheera and not for thee^ fat old 
Baloo! ” 

“ That is all one to me,” said Baloo, though 
he was hurt and grieved. “ Tell Bagheera, 
then, the Master Words of the Jungle that 
I have taught thee this day.” 

‘‘Master Words for which people.?^” said 
Mowgli, delighted to show off. “ The jungle 
has many tongues. I know them all.” 

“ A little thou knowest, but not much. 
See, O Bagheera, they never thank their 
teacher! Not one small wolfling has come 
back to thank old Baloo for his teachings. 
Say the Word for the Hunting People, then, 

— great scholar! ” 

“ We be of one blood, ye and I,” said 






56 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


Mowgli, giving the words the Bear accent 
which all the Hunting People of the Jungle 
use. 

“ Good! Now for the Bird.” 

Mowgli repeated, with the Kite’s whistle 
at the end of the sentence. 

“ Now for the Snake People,” said Bag- 
heera. 

The answer was a perfectly indescribable 
hiss, and Mowgli kicked up his feet behind, 
clapped his hands together to applaud himself, 
and jumped on Bagheera’s back, where he sat 
sideways, drumming with his heels on the 
glossy skin and making the worst faces that 
he could think of at Baloo. 

“ There — there! That was worth a little 
bruise,” said the Brown Bear, tenderly. 
“ Some day thou wilt remember me.” Then 
he turned aside to tell Bagheera how he had 
begged the Master Words from Hathi, the 
Wild Elephant, who knows all about these 
things, and how Hathi had taken Mowgli 



KAA’S HUNTING 


57 


down to a pool to get the Snake Word from a 
water-snake, because Baloo could not pro¬ 
nounce it, and how Mowgli was now reason¬ 
ably safe against all accidents in the jungle, 
because neither snake, bird, nor beast would 
hurt him. 

“ No one then is to be feared,” Baloo wound 
up, patting his big furry stomach with 
pride. 

“ Except his own tribe,” said Bagheera, 
under his breath; and then aloud to Mowgli: 

Have a care for my ribs. Little Brother! 
What is all this dancing up and down? ” 

Mowgli had been trying to make himself 
heard by pulling at Bagheera’s shoulder-fur 
and kicking hard. When the two listened to 
him he was shouting at the top of his voice: 
“ And so I shall have a tribe of my own, 
and lead them through the branches all day 
long.” 

What is this new folly, little dreamer of 
dreams? ” said Bagheera. 



58 


THE JUNGLE BOOK 


“ Yes, and throw branches and dirt at old 
Baloo,” Mowgli went on. “ They have prom¬ 
ised me this, ah! ” 

“ Whoof! ” Baloo’s big paw scooped Mow¬ 
gli off Bagheera’s back, and as the boy 
lay between the big fore paws he could see 
the bear was angry. 

“ Mowgli,” said Baloo, “ thou hast been 
talking with the Bandar-log — the Monkey 
People.” 

Mowgli looked at Bagheera to see if the 
panther was angry too, and Bagheera’s eyes 
were as hard as jade-stones. 

“ Thou hast been with the Monkey People 

— the gray apes — the people without a Law 

— the eaters of everything. That is great 
shame.” 

“ When Baloo hurt my head,” said Mowgli 
(he was still down on his back), “ I went 
away, and the gray apes came down from 
the trees and had pity on me. No one else 
cared.” He snuffled a little. 






KAA’S HUNTING 


59 


“ The pity of the Monkey People! ” Ba- 
loo snorted. 

“ The stillness of the mountain stream! 
The cool of the summer sun ! And then, man- 
cub ” 

And then — and then they gave me nuts 
and pleasant things to eat, and they — they 
carried me in their arms up to the top of 
the trees and said I was their blood-brother, 
except that I had no tail, and should be their 
leader some day.” 

“ They have no leader,” said Bagheera. 
“ They lie. They have always lied.” 

“ They were very kind, and bade me come 
again. Why have I never been taken among 
the Monkey People.? They stand on their 
feet as I do. They do not hit me with hard 
paws. They play all day. Let me get up! 
Bad Baloo, let me up! I will go play with 
them again.” 

‘‘ Listen, man-cub,” said the bear, and his 
voice rumbled like thunder on a hot night. 




60 


THE JUNGLE BOOK 


“ I have taught thee all the Law of the Jungle 
for all the Peoples of the Jungle — except 
the Monkey Folk who live in the trees. They 
have no Law. They are outcasts. They 
have no speech of their own, but use the 
stolen words which they overhear when they 
listen and peep and wait up above in the 
branches. Their way is not our way. They 
are without leaders. They have no remem¬ 
brance. They boast and chatter and pretend 
that they are a great people about to do great 
affairs in the jungle, but the falling of a nut 
turns their mind to laughter, and all is for¬ 
gotten. We of the jungle have no dealings 
with them. We do not drink where the mon¬ 
keys drink; we do not go where the monkeys 
go; we do not hunt where they hunt; we do 
not die where they die. Hast thou ever heard 
me speak of the Bandar-log till to-day?” 

‘‘ No,” said Mowgli in a whisper, for the 
forest was very still now that Baloo had fin¬ 
ished. 




KAA’S HUNTING 


61 


“ The Jungle People put them out of their 
mouths and out of their minds. They are 
very many, evil, dirty, shameless, and they 
desire, if they have any fixed desire, to be 
noticed by the Jungle People. But we do not 
notice them even when they throw nuts and 
filth on our heads.” 

He had hardly spoken when a shower of 
nuts and twigs spattered down through the 
branches; and they could hear coughings and 
bowlings and angry jumpings high up in the 
air among the thin branches. 

“ The Monkey People are forbidden,” said 
Baloo, “ forbidden to the Jungle People. 
Remember.” 

Forbidden,” said Bagheera; “ but I still 
think Baloo should have warned thee against 
them.” 

“I — IHow was I to guess he would 
play with such dirt. The Monkey People! 
Faugh! ” 

A fresh shower came down on their heads, 




62 


THE JUNGLE BOOK 


and the two trotted away, taking Mowgli with 
them. What Baloo had said about the mon¬ 
keys was perfectly true. They belonged to 
the tree-tops, and as beasts very seldom look 
up, there was no occasion for the monkeys 
and the Jungle People to cross one another’s 
path. But whenever they found a sick wolf, 
or a wounded tiger or bear, the monkeys would 
torment him, and would throw sticks and nuts 
at any beast for fun and in the hope of being 
noticed. Then they would howl and shriek 
senseless songs, and invite the Jungle People 
to climb up their trees and fight them, or 
would start furious battles over nothing 
among themselves, and leave the dead monkeys 
where the Jungle People could see them. 

They were always just going to have a 
leader and laws and customs of their own, 
but they never did, because their memories 
would not hold over from day to day, and so 
they settled things by making up a saying: 
“ What the Bandar-log think now the Jungle 




KAA’S HUNTING 


63 


will think later ” ; and that comforted them 
a great deal. None of the beasts could reach 
them, but on the other hand none of the beasts 
would notice them, and that was why they 
were so pleased when Mowgli came to play 
with them, and when they heard how angry 
Baloo was. 

They never meant to do any more,— the 
Bandar-log never mean anything at all,— but 
one of them invented what seemed to him a 
brilliant idea, and he told all the others that 
Mowgli would be a useful person to keep in 
the tribe, because he could weave sticks to¬ 
gether for protection from the wind; so, if 
they caught him, they could make him teach 
them. Of course Mowgli, as a wood-cutter’s 
child, inherited all sorts of instincts, and used 
to make little play-huts of fallen branches 
without thinking how he came to do it. The 
Monkey People, watching in the trees, con¬ 
sidered these huts most wonderful. This 
time, they said, they were really going to 




64 


THE JUNGLE BOOK 


have a leader and become the wisest people 
in the jungle—so wise that every one else 
would notice and envy them. Therefore they 
followed Baloo and Bagheera and Mowgli 
through the jungle very quietly till it was time 
for the midday nap, and Mowgli, who was 
very much ashamed of himself, slept between 
the panther and the bear, resolving to have 
no more to do with the Monkey People. 

The next thing he remembered was feeling 
hands on his legs and arms,—hard, strong 
little hands,—and then a swash of branches 
in his face; and then he was staring down 
through the swaying boughs as Baloo woke 
the jungle with his deep cries and Bagheera 
bounded up the trunk with every tooth bared. 
The Bandar-log howled with triumph, and 
scuffled away to the upper branches where 
Bagheera dared not follow, shouting: “He 
has noticed us! Bagheera has noticed us! 
All the Jungle People admire us for our skill 
and our cunning!” Then they began their 





KAA’S HUNTING 


65 


.-'f 


flight; and the flight of the Monkey People 
through tree-land is one of the things no¬ 
body can describe. They have their regular 
roads and cross-roads, uphills and down-hills, 
all laid out from fifty to seventy or a hundred 
feet aboveground, and by these they can 
travel even at night if necessary. 

Two of the strongest monkeys caught 
Mowgli under the arms and swung off with 
him through the tree-tops, twenty feet at a 
bound. Had they been alone they could 
have gone twice as fast, but the boy’s weight 
held them back. Sick and giddy as Mowgli 
was he could not help enjoying the wild rush, 
though the glimpses of earth far down below 
frightened him, and the terrible check and 
jerk at the end of the swing over nothing but 
empty air brought his heart between his 
teeth. 

His escort would rush him up a tree till 
he felt the weak topmost branches crackle 
and bend under them, and, then, with a cough 



66 


THE JUNGLE BOOK 


and a whoop, would fling themselves into the 
air outward and downward, and bring up 
hanging by their hands or their feet to the 
lower limbs of the next tree. Sometimes he 
could see for miles and miles over the still 
green jungle, as a man on the top of a mast 
can see for miles across the sea, and then 
the branches and leaves would lash him across 
the face, and he and his two guards would be 
almost down to earth again. 

So bounding and crashing and whooping 
and yelling, the whole tribe of Bandar-log 
swept along the tree-roads with Mowgli their 
prisoner. 

For a time he was afraid of being dropped; 
then he grew angry, but he knew better than 
to struggle; and then he began to think. 
The first thing was to send back word to 
Baloo and Bagheera, for, at the pace the 
monkeys were going, he knew his friends 
would be left far behind. It was useless to 
look down, for he could see only the top 



KAA’S HUNTING 


67 


sides of the branches, so he stared upward 
and saw, far away in the blue, Rann, the 
Kite, balancing and wheeling as he kept watch 
over the jungle waiting for things to die. 
Rann noticed that the monkeys were carrying 
something, and dropped a few hundred yards 
to find out whether their load was good to 
eat. He whistled with surprise when he saw 
Mowgli being dragged up to a tree-top, and 
heard him give the Kite call for We be of 
one blood, thou and I.” The waves of the 
branches closed over the boy, but Rann bal¬ 
anced away to the next tree in time to see 
the little brown face come up again. “ Mark 
my trail! ” Mowgli shouted. “ Tell Baloo 
of the Seeonee Pack, and Bagheera of the 
Council Rock.” 

‘‘In whose name. Brother.?” Rann had 
never seen Mowgli before, though of course 
he had heard of him. 

“ Mowgli, the Frog. Man-cub they call 
me! Mark my tra—il! ” 




68 


THE JUNGLE BOOK 


The last words were shrieked as he was 
being swung through the air, but Rann 
nodded, and rose up till he looked no bigger 
than a speck of dust, and there he hung, 
watching with his telescope eyes the swaying 
of the tree-tops as Mowgli’s escort whirled 
along. 

“ They never go far,” he said, with a 
chuckle. “ They never do what they set out 
to do. Always pecking at new things are 
the Bandar-log. This time, if I have any 
eyesight, they have pecked down trouble for 
themselves, for Baloo is no fledgling and Bag- 
heera can, as I know, kill more than goats.” 

Then he rocked on his wings, his feet gath¬ 
ered up under him, and waited. 

Meanwhile, Baloo and Bagheera were furi¬ 
ous with rage and grief. Bagheera climbed 
as he had never climbed before, but the 
branches broke beneath his weight, and he 
slipped down, his claws full of bark. 

“ Why didst thou not warn the man-cub! ” 



BAI.OO IN THE FOREST 


















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KAA’S HUNTING 


69 


he roared to poor Baloo, who had set off at a 
clumsy trot in the hope of overtaking the 
monkeys. “ What was the use of half slay¬ 
ing him with blows if thou didst not warn 
him ? ” 

Haste! O haste! We — we may catch 
them yet! ” Baloo panted. 

“ At that speed! It would not tire a 
wounded cow. Teacher of the Law, cub- 
beater — a mile of that rolling to and fro 
would burst thee open. Sit still and think! 
Make a plan. This is no time for chasing. 
They may drop him if we follow too close.” 

“ Arrula! Whoo! They may have 
dropped him already, being tired of carrying 
him. Who can trust the Bandar-log.^ Put 
dead bats on my head! Give me black bones 
to eat! Roll me into the hives of the wild 
bees that I may be stung to death, and bury 
me with the hyena; for I am the most miser¬ 
able of bears! Arulala! Wahooa! O Mow- 
gli, Mowgli! Why did I not warn thee 




70 


THE JUNGLE BOOK 


against the Monkey Folk instead of breaking 
thy head? Now perhaps I may have knocked 
the day’s lesson out of his mind, and he will 
be alone in the jungle without the Master 
Words! ” 

Baloo clasped his paws over his ears and 
rolled to and fro, moaning. 

“ At least he gave me all the Words cor¬ 
rectly a little time ago,” said Bagheera, 
impatiently. “ Baloo, thou hast neither 
memory nor respect. What would the 
jungle think if I, the Black Panther, curled 
myself up like Ikki, the Porcupine, and 
howled ? ” 

“ What do I care what the jungle thinks? 
He may be dead by now.” 

‘‘ Unless and until they drop him from the 
branches in sport, or kill him out of idleness, 
I have no fear for the man-cub. He is wise 
and well-taught, and, above all, he has the 
eyes that make the Jungle People afraid. 
But (and it is a great evil) he is in the 




KAA’S HUNTING 


71 


power of the Bandar-log, and they, because 
they live in trees, have no fear of any of 
our people.” Bagheera licked his one fore 
paw thoughtfully. 

Fool that I am! Oh fat, brown, root¬ 
digging fool that I am! ” said Baloo, uncoil¬ 
ing himself with a jerk. “ It is true what 
Hathi, the Wild Elephant, says: ‘ To each 

his own fear ’ ; and they, the Bandar-log, 
fear Kaa, the Rock Snake. He can climb as 
well as they can. He steals the young mon¬ 
keys in the night. The mere whisper of his 
name makes their wicked tails cold. Let us 
go to Kaa.” 

“ What will he do for us ? He is not of 
our tribe, being footless and with most evil 
eyes,” said Bagheera. 

“ He is very old and very cunning. Above 
all, he is always. hungry,” said Baloo, hope¬ 
fully. “ Promise him many goats.” 

“ He sleeps for a full month after he has 
once eaten. He may be asleep now, and even 




THE JUNGLE BOOK 


were he awake, what if he would rather kill 
his own goats ? ” Bagheera, who did not 
know much about Kaa, was naturally suspi¬ 
cious. 

“ Then in that case, thou and I together, 
old hunter, may make him see reason.” Here 
Baloo rubbed his faded brown shoulder 
against the panther, and they went off to 
look for Kaa, the Rock Python. 

They found him stretched out on a warm 
ledge in the afternoon sun, admiring his beau¬ 
tiful new coat, for he had been in retirement 
for the last ten days changing his skin, and 
now he was very splendid — darting his big 
blunt-nosed head along the ground, and twist¬ 
ing the thirty feet of his body into fantastic 
knots and curves, and licking his lips as he 
thought of his dinner to come. 

“ He has not eaten,” said Baloo, with a 
grunt of relief, as soon as he saw the beauti¬ 
fully mottled brown and yellow jacket. “ Be 
careful, Bagheera! He is always a little 




KAA’S HUNTING 


73 


blind after he has changed his skin, and very 
quick to strike.” 

Kaa was not a poison snake — in fact he 
rather despised the Poison Snakes for cow¬ 
ards ; but his strength lay in his hug, and 
when he had once lapped his huge coils round 
anybody there was no more to be said. 
“ Good hunting! ” cried Baloo, sitting up on 
his haunches. Like all snakes of his breed 
Kaa was rather deaf, and did not hear the 
call at first. Then he curled up ready for 
any accident, his head lowered. 

“ Good hunting for us all,” he answered. 
“ Oho, Baloo, what dost thou do here.'’ 
Good hunting, Bagheera. One of us at least 
needs food. Is there any news of game 
afoot.? A doe now, or even a young buck? 
I am as empty as a dried well.” 

“ We are hunting,” said Baloo, carelessly. 
He knew that you must not hurry Kaa. He 
is too big. 

“ Give me permission to come with you,” 




74 


THE JUNGLE BOOK 


said Kaa. “ A blow more or less is nothing 
to thee, Bagheera or Baloo, but I — I have 
to wait and wait for days in a wood path and 
climb half a night on the mere chance of a 
young ape. Pss naw! The branches are not 
what they were when I was young. Rotten 
twigs and dry boughs are they all.” 

‘‘ Maybe thy great weight has something 
to do with the matter,” said Baloo. 

I am a fair length — a fair length,” said 
Kaa, with a little pride. “ But for all that, 
it is the fault of this new-grown timber. I 
came very near to falling on my last hunt,— 
very near indeed,— and the noise of my slip¬ 
ping, for my tail was not tight wrapped round 
the tree, waked the Bandar-log, and they 
called me most evil names.” 

‘‘ Footless, yellow earthworm,” said Bag¬ 
heera under his whiskers, as though he were 
trying to remember something. 

“ Sssss! Have they ever called me that? ” 
said Kaa. 





KAA’S HUNTING 


75 


“ Something of that kind it was that they 
shouted to us last moon, but we never noticed 
them. They will say anything — even that 
thou hast lost all thy teeth, and dare not face 
anything bigger than a kid, because (they 
are indeed shameless, these Bandar-log) — 
because thou art afraid of the he-goats’ 
horns,” Bagheera went on sweetly. 

Now a snake, especially a wary old python 
like Kaa, very seldom shows that he is angry; 
but Baloo and Bagheera could see the big 
swallowing muscles on either side of Kaa’s 
throat ripple and bulge. 

“ The Bandar-log have shifted their 
grounds,” he said, quietly. “ When I came 
up into the sun to-day I heard them whooping 
among the tree-tops.” 

“ It — it is the Bandar-log that we follow 
now,” said Baloo; but the words stuck in his 
throat, for this was the first time in his mem¬ 
ory that one of the Jungle People had owned to 
being interested in the doings of the monkeys. 




76 


THE JUNGLE BOOK 


“ Beyond doubt, then, it is no small thing 
that takes two such hunters — leaders in their 
own jungle, I am certain — on the trail of 
the Bandar-log,” Kaa replied, courteously, 
as he swelled with curiosity. 

Indeed,” Baloo began, “ I am no more 
than the old, and sometimes very foolish. 
Teacher of the Law to the Seeonee wolf-cubs, 
and Bagheera here —” 

“ Is Bagheera,” said the Black Panther, 
and his jaws shut with a snap, for he did not 
believe in being humble. “ The trouble is 
this, Kaa. Those nut-stealers and pickers of 
palm-leaves have stolen away our man-cub, 
of whom thou hast perhaps heard.” 

“ I heard some news from Ikki (his quills 
make him presumptuous) of a man-thing that 
was entered into a wolf-pack, but I did not 
believe. Ikki is full of stories half heard and 
very badly told.” 

“ But it is true. He is such a man-cub 
as never was,” said Baloo. “ The best and 






KAA’S HUNTING 


77 


wisest and boldest of man-cubs. My own pu¬ 
pil, who shall make the name of Baloo famous 
through all the jungles; and besides, I — we 
— love him, Kaa.” 

“ Ts! Ts! ” said Kaa, shaking his head 
to and fro. “ I also have known what love is. 
There are tales I could tell that—” 

“ That need a clear night when we are all 
well fed to praise properly,” said Bagheera, 
quickly. ‘‘ Our man-cub is in the hands 
of the Bandar-log now, and we know that 
of all the Jungle People they fear Kaa 
alone.” 

“ They fear me alone. They have good 
reason,” said Kaa. “ Chattering, foolish, 
vain — vain, foolish, and chattering — are 
the monkeys. But a man-thing in their 
hands is in no good luck. They grow tired 
of the nuts they pick, and throw them down. 
They carry a branch half a day, meaning to 
do great things with it, and then they snap 
it in two. That manling is not to be envied. 




78 


THE JUNGLE BOOK 


They call me also —‘ yellow fish,’ was it 
not? ” 

“ Worm — worm — earthworm,” said Bag- 
heera; “ as well as other things which I can¬ 
not now say for shame.” 

“We must remind them to speak well of 
their master. Aaa-sssh! We must help 
their wandering memories. Now, whither 
went they with thy cub ? ” 

“ The jungle alone knows. Toward the 
sunset, I believe,” said Baloo. “ We had 
thought that thou wouldst know, Kaa.” 

“ I? How? I take them when they come 
in my way, but I do not hunt the Bandar-log 
— or frogs — or green scum on a water-hole, 
for that matter.” 

“ Up, up! Up, up! Hillo! Illo! Illo! 
Look up, Baloo of the Seeonee Wolf Pack! ” 

Baloo looked up to see where the voice came 
from, and there was Rann, the Kite, sweeping 
down with the sun shining on the upturned 
flanges of his wings. It was near Rann’s 




KAA’S HUNTING 


79 


bedtime, but he had ranged all over the jun¬ 
gle looking for the bear, and missed him in 
the thick foliage. 

“ What is it ? ” said Baloo. 

“ I have seen Mowgli among the Bandar¬ 
log. He bade me tell you. I watched. The 
Bandar-log have taken him beyond the river 
to the Monkey City — to the Cold Lairs. 
They may stay there for a night, or ten 
nights, or an hour. I have told the bats to 
watch through the dark time. That is my 
message. Good hunting, all you below! ” 

“ Full gorge and a deep sleep to you, 
Rann! ” cried Bagheera. “ I will remember 
thee in my next kill, and put aside the head 
for thee alone, O best of kites! ” 

‘‘ It is nothing. It is nothing. The boy 
held the Master Word. I could have done no 
less,” and Rann circled up again to his roost. 

“ He has not forgotten to use his tongue,” 
said Baloo, with a chuckle of pride. “ To 
think of one so young remembering the Mas- 




80 


THE JUNGLE BOOK 


ter Word for the birds while he was being 
pulled across trees ! ” 

“ It was most firmly driven into him,” said 
Bagheera. “ But I am proud of him, and 
now we must go to the Cold Lairs.” 

They all knew where that place was, but 
few of the Jungle People ever went there, be¬ 
cause what they called the Cold Lairs was an 
old deserted city, lost and buried in the jungle, 
and beasts seldom use a place that men have 
once used. The wild boar will, but the hunt¬ 
ing-tribes do not. Besides, the monkeys 
lived there as much as they could be said to 
live anywhere, and no self-respecting animal 
would come within eye-shot of it except in 
times of drouth, when the half-ruined tanks 
and reservoirs held a little water. 

“It is half a night’s journey — at full 
speed,” said Bagheera. Baloo looked very 
serious. “ I will go as fast as I can,” he 
said, anxiously. 

“ We dare not wait for thee. Follow, Ba- 




THE COLD LAIRS 
























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KAA’S HUNTING 


81 


loo. We must go on the quick-foot — Kaa 
and I.” 

“ Feet or no feet, I can keep abreast of all 
thy four,” said Kaa, shortly. 

Baloo made one effort to hurry, but had 
to sit down panting, and so they left him to 
come on later, while Bagheera hurried for¬ 
ward, at the rocking panther-canter. Kaa 
said nothing, but, strive as Bagheera might, 
the huge Rock Python held level with him. 
When they came to a hill-stream, Bagheera 
gained, because he bounded across while Kaa 
swam, his head and two feet of his neck clear¬ 
ing the water, but on level ground Kaa made 
up the distance. 

‘‘ By the Broken Lock that freed me,” said 
Bagheera, when twilight had fallen, “ thou 
art no slow-goer.” 

“ I am hungry,” said Kaa. “ Besides, 
they called me speckled frog.” 

“ Worm — earthworm, and yellow to 


boot.” 




82 


THE JUNGLE BOOK 


“ All one. Let us go on,” and Kaa seemed 
to pour himself along the ground, finding the 
shortest road with his steady eyes, and keep¬ 
ing to it. 

In the Cold Lairs the Monkey People were 
not thinking of Mowgli’s friends at all. 
They had brought the boy to the Lost City, 
and were very pleased with themselves for 
the time. Mowgli had never seen an Indian 
city before, and though this was almost a 
heap of ruins it seemed very wonderful and 
splendid. Some king had built it long ago 
on a little hill. You could still trace the 
stone causeways that led up to the ruined 
gates where the last splinters of wood hung 
to the worn, rusted hinges. Trees had grown 
into and out of the walls; the battlements 
were tumbled down and decayed, and wild 
creepers hung out of the windows of the 
towers on the wall in bushy hanging 
clumps. 

A great roofless palace crowned the hill. 



KAA’S HUNTING 


83 


and the marble of the courtyards and the 
fountains was split and stained with red and 
green, and the very cobblestones in the court¬ 
yard where the king’s elephants used to live 
had been thrust up and apart by grasses and 
young trees. From the palace you could see 
the rows and rows of roofless houses that 
made up the city, looking like empty honey¬ 
combs filled with blackness; the shapeless 
block of stone that had been an idol in the 
square where four roads met; the pits and 
dimples at street corners where the public 
wells once stood, and the shattered domes of 
temples with wild figs sprouting on their 
sides. 

The monkeys called the place their city, 
and pretended to despise the Jungle People 
because they lived in the forest. And yet 
they never knew what the buildings were made 
for nor how to use them. They would sit in 
circles on the hall of the king’s council-cham¬ 
ber, and scratch for fleas and pretend to be 



84 


THE JUNGLE BOOK 


men; or they would run in and out of the 
roofless houses and collect pieces of plaster 
and old bricks in a corner, and forget where 
they had hidden them, and fight and cry in 
scuffling crowds, and then break off to play up 
and down the terraces of the king’s garden, 
where they would shake the rose-trees and 
the oranges in sport to see the fruit and 
flowers fall. They explored all the passages 
and dark tunnels in the palace and the hun¬ 
dreds of little dark rooms; but they never 
remembered what they had seen and what they 
had not, and so drifted about in ones and 
twos or crowds, telling one another that they 
were doing as men did. They drank at the 
tanks and made the water all muddy, and 
then they fought over it, and then they would 
all rush together in mobs and shout: “ There 

are none in the jungle so wise and good and 
clever and strong and gentle as the Bandar¬ 
log.” Then all would begin again till they 
grew tired of the city and went back to the 




KAA’S HUNTING 


85 


tree-tops, hoping the Jungle People would 
notice them. 

Mowgli, who had been trained under the 
Law of the Jungle, did not like or understand 
this kind of life. The monkeys dragged him 
into the Cold Lairs late in the afternoon, and 
instead of going to sleep, as Mowgli would 
have done after a long journey, they joined 
hands and danced about and sang their fool¬ 
ish songs. 

One of the monkeys made a speech, and told 
his companions that Mowgli’s capture marked 
a new thing in the history of the Bandar-log, 
for Mowgli was going to show them how to 
weave sticks and canes together as a protec¬ 
tion against rain and cold. Mowgli picked 
up some creepers and began to work them in 
and out, and the monkeys tried to imitate; 
but in a very few minutes they lost interest 
and began to pull their friends’ tails or jump 
up and down on all fours, coughing. 

“ I want to eat,” said Mowgli. “ I am a 




86 


THE JUNGLE BOOK 


stranger in this part of the jungle. Bring 
me food, or give me leave to hunt here.” 

Twenty or thirty monkeys bounded away 
to bring him nuts and wild pawpaws; but they 
fell to fighting on the road, and it was too 
much trouble to go back with what was left 
of the fruit. Mowgli was sore and angry as 
well as hungry, and he roamed through the 
empty city giving the Strangers’ Hunting 
Call from time to time, but no one answered 
him, and Mowgli felt that he had reached a 
very bad place indeed. 

‘‘ All that Baloo has said about the Ban¬ 
dar-log is true,” he thought to himself. 
“ They have no Law, no Hunting Call, and 
no leaders — nothing but foolish words and 
little picking, thievish hands. So if I am 
starved or killed here, it will be all my own 
fault. But I must try to return to my own 
jungle. Baloo will surely beat me, but that 
is better than chasing silly rose-leaves with 
the Bandar-log.” 



KAA’S HUNTING 


87 


But no sooner had he walked to the city 
wall than the monkeys pulled him back, tell¬ 
ing him that he did not know how happy he 
was, and pinching him to make him grateful. 
He set his teeth and said nothing, but went 
with the shouting monkeys to a terrace above 
the red sandstone reservoirs that were half 
full of rain-water. There was a ruined sum¬ 
mer-house of white marble in the center of 
the terrace, built for queens dead a hundred 
years ago. The domed roof had half fallen 
in and blocked up the underground passage 
from the palace by which the queens used to 
enter; but the walls were made of screens of 
marble tracery — beautiful, milk-white fret¬ 
work, set with agates and cornelians and jas¬ 
per and lapis lazuli, and as the moon came 
up behind the hill it shone through the open¬ 
work, casting shadows on the ground like 
black-velvet embroidery. 

Sore, sleepy, and hungry as he was, Mow- 
gli could not help laughing when the Bandar- 




88 


THE JUNGLE BOOK 


log began, twenty at a time, to tell him how 
great and wise and strong and gentle they 
were, and how foolish he was to wish to leave 
them. “We are great. We are free. We 
are wonderful. We are the most wonderful 
people in all the jungle! We all say so, and 
so it must be true,” they shouted. “ Now as 
you are a new listener and can carry our 
words back to the Jungle People so that they 
may notice us in future, we will tell you all 
about our most excellent selves.” 

Mowgli made no objection, and the mon¬ 
keys gathered by hundreds and hundreds on 
the terrace to listen to their own speakers 
singing the praises of the Bandar-log, and 
whenever a speaker stopped for want of 
breath they would all shout together: “ This 

is true; we all say so.” 

Mowgli nodded and blinked, and said 
“ Yes ” when they asked him a question, and 
his head spun with the noise. “ Tabaqui, 
the Jackal, must have bitten all these people,” 




KAA’S HUNTING 


89 


he said to himself, “ and now they have the 
madness. Certainly this is dewanee — the 
madness. Do they never go to sleep? Now 
there is a cloud coming to cover that moon. 
If it were only a big enough cloud I might try 
to run away in the darkness. But I am tired.” 

That same cloud was being watched by two 
good friends in the ruined ditch below the 
city wall, for Bagheera and Kaa, knowing 
well how dangerous the Monkey People were 
in large numbers, did not wish to run any 
risks. The monkeys never fight unless they 
are a hundred to one, and few in the jungle 
care for those odds. 

“ I will go to the west wall,” Kaa whis¬ 
pered, “ and come down swiftly with the slope 
of the ground in my favor. They will not 
throw themselves upon back in their hun¬ 
dreds, but —” 

“ I know it,” said Bagheera. “ Would 
that Baloo were here; but we must do what 
we can. When that cloud covers the moon 




90 


THE JUNGLE BOOK 


I shall go to the terrace. They hold some 
sort of council there over the boy.” 

“ Good hunting,” said Kaa, grimly, and 
glided away to the west wall. That hap¬ 
pened to be the least ruined of any, and the 
big snake was delayed a while before he could 
find a way up the stones. 

The cloud hid the moon, and as Mowgli 
wondered what would come next he heard 
Bagheera’s light feet on the terrace. The 
Black Panther had raced up the slope almost 
without a sound, and was striking — he knew 
better than to waste time in biting — right 
and left among the monkeys, who were seated 
round Mowgli in circles fifty and sixty deep. 
There was a howl of fright and rage, and 
then as Bagheera tripped on the rolling, kick¬ 
ing bodies beneath him, a monkey shouted: 
“ There is only one here! Kill him! Kill! ” 
A scuffling mass of monkeys, biting, scratch¬ 
ing, tearing, and pulling, closed over Bag¬ 
heera, while five or six laid hold of Mowgli, 







THE MONKEY FIGHT 




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KAA’S HUNTING 


91 


dragged him up the wall of the summer¬ 
house, and pushed him through the hole 
of the broken dome. A man-trained boy 
would have been badly bruised, for the 
fall was a good ten feet, but Mowgli fell as 
Baloo had taught him to fall, and landed 
light. 

“ Stay there,” shouted the monkeys, till 
we have killed thy friend. Later we will play 
with thee, if the Poison People leave thee 
alive.” 

“ We be of one blood, ye and I,” said 
Mowgli, quickly giving the Snake’s Call. He 
could hear rustling and hissing in the rubbish 
all round him, and gave the Call a second 
time to make sure. 

“ Down hoods all,” said half a dozen low 
voices. Every old ruin in India becomes 
sooner or later a dwelling-place of snakes, and 
the old summer-house was alive with cobras. 
“ Stand still. Little Brother, lest thy feet do 


us harm.” 



92 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


Mowgli stood as quietly as he could, peer- j 
ing through the openwork and listening to the Ij 
furious din of the fight round the Black Pan- 
ther — the yells and chatterings and scuf- f 
flings, and Bagheera’s deep, hoarse cough as 
he backed and bucked and twisted and V 
plunged under the heaps of his enemies. For 
the first time since he was bom, Bagheera 
was fighting for his life. 

“ Baloo must be at hand; Bagheera would 
not have come alone,” Mowgli thought; and 
then he called aloud: ‘‘ To the tank, Bag¬ 

heera ! Roll to the water-tanks! Roll and 
plunge! Get to the water! ” 

Bagheera heard, and the cry that told him 
Mowgli was safe gave him new courage. He J 
worked his way desperately, inch by inch, 
straight for the reservoirs, hitting in silence. 

Then from the ruined wall nearest the jun¬ 
gle rose up the mmbling war-shout of Baloo. 
The old bear had done his best, but he could 
not come before. “ Bagheera,” he shouted. 





KAA’S HUNTING 


93 


“I am here! I climb! I haste! Ahuwora! 
The stones slip under my feet! Wait my 
coming, O most infamous Bandar-log! ” 

He panted up the terrace only to disappear 
to the head in a wave of monkeys, but he 
threw himself squarely on his haunches, and 
spreading out his fore paws, hugged as many 
as he could hold, and then began to hit with 
a regular bat-bat-hat, like the flipping strokes 
of a paddle-wheel. 

A crash and a splash told Mowgli that 
Bagheera had fought his way to the tank, 
where the monkeys could not follow. The 
panther lay gasping for breath, his head just 
out of water, while the monkeys stood three 
deep on the red stone steps, dancing up and 
down with rage, ready to spring upon him 
from all sides if he came out to help Baloo, 
It was then that Bagheera lifted up his drip¬ 
ping chin, and in despair gave the Snake’s 
Call for protection,—‘‘ We be of one blood, 
ye and I,”— for he believed that Kaa had 




94 


THE JUNGLE BOOK 


turned tail at the last minute. Even Baloo, 
half smothered under the monkeys on the edge 
of the terrace, could not help chuckling as 
he heard the big Black Panther asking for 
help. 

Kaa had only just worked his way over the 
west wall, landing with a wrench that dis¬ 
lodged a coping-stone into the ditch. He 
had no intention of losing any advantage 
of the ground, and coiled and uncoiled 
himself once or twice, to be sure that 
every foot of his long body was in working 
order. 

All that while the fight with Baloo went on, 
and the monkeys yelled in the tank round 
Bagheera, and Mang, the Bat, flying to and 
fro, carried the news of the great battle over 
the jungle, till even Hathi, the Wild Ele¬ 
phant, trumpeted, and, far away, scattered 
bands of the Monkey Folk woke and came 
leaping along the tree-roads to help their 
comrades in the Cold Lairs, and the noise of 




KAA’S HUNTING 


95 


the fight roused all the day-birds for miles 
round. 

Then Kaa came straight, quickly, and anx¬ 
ious to kill. The fighting strength of a py¬ 
thon is in the driving blow of his head, backed 
by all the strength and weight of his body. 
If you can imagine a lance, or a battering- 
ram, or a hammer, weighing nearly half a 
ton driven by a cool, quiet mind living in the 
handle of it, you can imagine roughly what 
Kaa was like when he fought. A python 
four or five feet long can knock a man down 
if he hits him fairly in the chest, and Kaa 
was thirty feet long, as you know. His first 
stroke was delivered into the heart of the 
crowd round Baloo — was sent home with 
shut mouth in silence, and there was no need 
of a second. The monkeys scattered with 
cries of “ Kaa! It is Kaa! Run! Run! ” 

Generations of monkeys had been scared 
into good behavior by the stories their elders 
told them of Kaa, the night-thief, who could 






96 


THE JUNGLE BOOK 


slip along the branches as quietly as moss 
grows, and steal away the strongest monkey 
that ever lived; of old Kaa, who could make 
himself look so like a dead branch or a rotten 
stump that the wisest were deceived till the 
branch caught them, and then — 

Kaa was everything that the monkeys 
feared in the jungle, for none of them knew 
the limits of his power, none of them could 
look him in the face, and none had ever come 
alive out of his hug. And so they ran, stam¬ 
mering with terror, to the walls and the roofs 
of the houses, and Baloo drew a deep breath 
of relief. His fur was much thicker than 
Bagheera’s, but he had suffered sorely in the 
fight. Then Kaa opened his mouth for the 
first time and spoke one long hissing word, 
and the far-away monkeys, hurrying to the 
defense of the Cold Lairs, stayed where they 
were, cowering, till the loaded branches bent 
and crackled under them. The monkeys on 
the walls and the empty houses stopped their 




KAA THE i»VTHON 










KAA’S HUNTING 


97 


cries, and in the stillness that fell upon the 
city Mowgli heard Bagheera shaking his wet 
sides as he came up from the tank. 

Then the clamor broke out again. The 
monkeys leaped higher up the walls; they 
clung round the necks of the big stone idols 
and shrieked as they skipped along the 
battlements; while Mowgli, dancing in 
the summer-house, put his eye to the screen- 
work and hooted owl-fashion between his 
front teeth, to show his derision and con¬ 
tempt. 

“ Get the man-cub out of that trap; I can 
do no more,” Bagheera gasped. “ Let us 
take the man-cub and go. They may attack 
again.” 

They will not move till I order them. 
Stay you sssso! ” Kaa hissed, and the city 
was silent once more. ‘‘ I could not come be¬ 
fore, Brother, but I think I heard thee call ” 
— this was to Bagheera. 

“I — I may have cried out in the battle,” 




98 


THE JUNGLE BOOK 


Bagheera answered. “ Baloo, art thou 
hurt? ” 

“ I am not sure that they have not pulled 
me into a hundred little bearlings,” said Ba¬ 
loo, gravely shaking one leg after the other. 
“ Wow! I am sore. Kaa, we owe thee, I 
think, our lives — Bagheera and I.” 

“ No matter. Where is the manling? ” 
Here, in a trap. I cannot climb out,” 
cried Mowgli. The curve of the broken 
dome was above his head. 

‘‘ Take him away. He dances like Mao, 
the Peacock. He will crush our young,” 
said the cobras inside. 

“ Hah! ” said Kaa, with a chuckle, ‘‘ he has 
friends everywhere, this manling. Stand 
back, Manling; and hide you, 0 Poison Peo¬ 
ple. I break down the wall.” 

Kaa looked carefully till he found a dis¬ 
colored crack in the marble tracery showing 
a weak spot, made two or three light taps 
with his head to get the distance, and then 





KAA’S HUNTING 


99 


lifting up six feet of his body clear of the 
ground, sent home half a dozen full-power, 
smashing blows, nose-first. The screenwork 
broke and fell away in a cloud of dust and 
rubbish, and Mowgli leaped through the 
opening and flung himself between Baloo 
and Bagheera — an arm round each big 
neck. 

“Art thou hurt?” said Baloo, hugging 
him softly. 

“ I am sore, hungry, and not a little 
bruised; but, oh, they have handled ye griev¬ 
ously, my Brothers! Ye bleed.” 

“ Others also,” said Bagheera, licking his 
lips and looking at the monkey-dead on the 
terrace and round the tank. 

“ It is nothing, it is nothing if thou art 
safe, O my pride of all little frogs I ” whim¬ 
pered Baloo. 

“ Of that we shall judge later,” said Bag¬ 
heera, in a dry voice that Mowgli did not at 
all like. “ But here is Kaa, to whom we owe 




100 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


the battle and thou owest thy life. Thank 
him according to our customs, Mowgli.” 

Mowgli turned and saw the great python’s 
head swaying a foot above his own. 

‘‘ So this is the manling,” said Kaa. 
“ Very soft is his skin, and he is not so unlike 
the Bandar-log. Have a care, Manling, that 
I do not mistake thee for a monkey some twi¬ 
light when I have newly changed my coat.” 

We be of one blood, thou and I,” Mowgli 
answered. “ I take my life from thee, to¬ 
night. My kill shall be thy kill if ever thou 
art hungry, O Kaa.” 

“ All thanks, Little Brother,” said Kaa, 
though his eyes twinkled. “ And what may 
so bold a hunter kill.? I ask that I may fol¬ 
low when next he goes abroad.” 

“ I kill nothing,— I am too little,— but I 
drive goats toward such as can use them. 
When thou art empty come to me and see if 
I speak the truth. I have some skill in these 
[he held out his hands], and if ever thou art 




KAA’S HUNTING 


101 


in a trap, I may pay the debt which I owe to 
thee, to Bagheera, and to Baloo, here. Good 
hunting to ye all, my masters.” 

“ Well said,” growled Baloo, for Mowgli 
had returned thanks very prettily. The py¬ 
thon dropped his head lightly for a minute on 
Mowgli’s shoulder. A brave heart and a 
courteous tongue,” said he. “ They shall 
carry thee far through the jungle, Manling. 
But now go hence quickly with thy friends. 
Go and sleep, for the moon sets, and what 
follows it is not well that thou shouldst 
see.” 

The moon was sinking behind the hills and 
the lines of trembling monkeys huddled to¬ 
gether on the walls and battlements looked 
like ragged, shaky fringes of things. Baloo 
went down to the tank for a drink, and Bag¬ 
heera began to put his fur in order, as Kaa 
glided out into the center of the terrace and 
brought his jaws together with a ringing snap 
that drew all the monkeys’ eyes upon him. 





102 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


“ The moon sets,” he said. “ Is there yet 
light to see.f* ” 

From the walls came a moan like the wind 
in the tree-tops: “ We see, 0 Kaa! ” 

“ Good! Begins now the Dance — the 
Dance of the Hunger of Kaa. Sit still and 
watch.” 

He turned twice or thrice in a big circle, 
weaving his head from right to left. Then 
he began making loops and figures of eight 
with his body, and soft, oozy triangles that 
melted into squares and five-sided figures, and 
coiled mounds, never resting, never hurrying, 
and never stopping his low, humming song. 
It grew darker and darker, till at last the 
dragging, shifting coils disappeared, but they 
could hear the rustle of the scales. 

Baloo and Bagheera stood still as stone, 
growling in their throats, their neck-hair 
bristling, and Mowgli watched and won¬ 
dered. 

“Bandar-log,” said the voice of Kaa at 




KAA’S HUNTING 


103 


last, “ can ye stir foot or hand without my 
order? Speak!” 

“ Without thy order we cannot stir foot 
or hand, O Kaa I ” 

“ Good! Come all one pace nearer to 
me.” 

The lines of the monkeys swayed forward 
helplessly, and Baloo and Bagheera took one 
stiff step forward with them. 

Nearer I ” hissed Kaa, and they all moved 
again. 

Mowgli laid his hands on Baloo and Bag¬ 
heera to get them away, and the two great 
beasts started as though they had been waked 
from a dream. 

‘‘ Keep thy hand on my shoulder,” Bag¬ 
heera whispered. “ Keep it there, or I must 
go back — must go back to Kaa. Aah! 

It is only old Kaa making circles on the 
dust,” said Mowgli; “ let us go ” ; and the 
three slipped off through a gap in the walls 
to the jungle. 




104 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


“ Whoof! ” said Baloo, when he stood un¬ 
der the still trees again. “ Never more will 
I make an ally of Kaa,” and he shook himself 
all over. 

“ He knows more than we,” said Bagheera, 
trembling. “ In a little time, had I stayed, 
I should have walked down his throat.” 

‘‘ Many will walk that road before the 
moon rises again,” said Baloo. “ He will 
have good hunting — after his own fashion.” 

“ But what was the meaning of it all ? ” 
said Mowgli, who did not know anything of 
a python’s powers of fascination. “ I saw 
no more than a big snake making foolish cir¬ 
cles till the dark came. And his nose was all 
sore. Ho! Ho! ” 

“ Mowgli,” said Bagheera, angrily, “ his 
nose was sore on thy account; as my ears 
and sides and paws, and Baloo’s neck and 
shoulders are bitten on thy account. Neither 
Baloo nor Bagheera will be able to hunt with 
pleasure for many days.” 




KAA’S HUNTING 


105 


“ It is nothing,” said Baloo; “ we have the 
man-cub again.” 

“ True; but he has cost us most heavily in 
time which might have been spent in good 
hunting, in wounds, in hair,— I am half 
plucked along my back,— and last of all, in 
honor. For, remember, Mowgli, I, who am 
the Black Panther, was forced to call upon 
Kaa for protection, and Baloo and I were 
both made stupid as little birds by the 
Hunger-Dance. All this. Man-cub, came of 
thy playing with the Bandar-log.” 

“ True; it is true,” said Mowgli, sorrow¬ 
fully. “ I am an evil man-cub, and my 
stomach is sad in me.” 

“ Mf! What says the Law of the Jungle, 
Baloo.'’ ” 

Baloo did not wish to bring Mowgli into 
any more trouble, but he could not tamper 
with the Law, so he mumbled, “ Sorrow 
never stays punishment. But remember, Bag- 
heera, he is very little.” 




106 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


“ I will remember; but he has done mis¬ 
chief; and blows must be dealt now. Mow- 
gli, hast thou anything to say ? ” 

“ Nothing. I did wrong. Baloo and 
thou art wounded. It is just.” 

Bagheera gave him half a dozen love-taps; 
from a panther’s point of view they would 
hardly have waked one of his own cubs, but 
for a seven year-old boy they amounted to 
as severe a beating as you could wish to 
avoid. When it was all over Mowgli sneezed, 
and picked himself up without a word. 

‘‘ Now,” said Bagheera, “ jump on my 
back. Little Brother, and we will go home.” 

One of the beauties of Jungle Law is that 
punishment settles all scores. There is no 
nagging afterward. 

Mowgli laid his head down on Bagheera’s 
back and slept so deeply that he never waked 
when he was put down by Mother Wolf’s side 
in the home-cave. 



KAA’S HUNTING 


107 


ROAD-SONG OF THE BANDAR-LOG 

Here we go in a flung festoon, 

Half-way up to the jealous moon! 

Don’t you envy our pranceful bands? 

Don’t you wish you had extra hands? 

Would n’t you like if your tails were — so — 
Curved in the shape of a Cupid’s bow? 

Now you’re angry, but — never ruind. 
Brother, thy tail hangs down behind! 

Here we sit in a branchy row. 

Thinking of beautiful things we know; 
Dreaming of deeds that we mean to do. 

All complete, in a minute or two — 
Something noble and grand and good. 

Won by merely wishing we could. 

Now we *re going to — never mind. 
Brother, thy tail hangs down behind! 

All the talk we ever have heard 
Uttered by bat or beast or bird — 

Hide or fin or scale or feather — 

Jabber it quickly and all together! 

Excellent! Wonderful! Once again! 

Now we are talking just like men. 

Let’s pretend we are . . . never mind. 




108 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


Brother, thy tail hangs down behind! 

This is the way of the Monkey-kind. 

Then join our leaping lines that scumfish 
through the pines. 

That rochet by where, light and high, the wild- 
grape swings. 

By the rubbish in our wake, and the noble noise 
we make. 

Be sure, be sure, we *re going to do some splen¬ 
did things! 






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TIGER! TIGER!’» 


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What of the hunting, hunter bold? 

Brother, the watch was long and cold. 
What of the quarry ye went to kill? 

Brother, he crops in the jungle still. 
Where is the power that made your pride? 

Brother, it ebbs from my flank and side. 
Where is the haste that ye hurry by? 
Brother, I go to my lair — to die. 



‘‘TIGER! TIGER!” 


N OW we must go back to the last tale 
but one. When Mowgli left the wolf’s 
cave after the fight with the Pack at the 
Council Rock, he went down to the plowed 
lands where the villagers lived, but he would 
not stop there because it was too near to the 
jungle, and he knew that he had made at least 
one bad enemy at the Council. So he hur¬ 
ried on, keeping to the rough road that ran 
down the valley, and followed it at a steady 
jog-trot for nearly twenty miles, till he came 
111 


112 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


to a country that he did not know. The val¬ 
ley opened out into a great plain dotted over 
with rocks and cut up by ravines. At one 
end stood a little village, and at the other 
the thick jungle came down in a sweep to 
the grazing-grounds, and stopped there as 
though it had been cut off with a hoe. All 
over the plain, cattle and buffaloes were graz¬ 
ing, and when the little boys in charge of the 
herds saw Mowgli they shouted and ran away, 
and the yellow pariah dogs that hang 
about every Indian village barked. Mowgli 
walked on, for he was feeling hungry, and 
when he came to the village gate he saw the 
big thorn-bush that was drawn up before the 
gate at twilight, pushed to one side. 

Umph! ” he said, for he had come across 
more than one such barricade in his night 
rambles after things to eat. “ So men are 
afraid of the People of the Jungle here also.” 
He sat down by the gate, and when a man 
came out he stood up, opened him mouth, and 




“TIGER! TIGER!” 


113 


pointed down it to show that he wanted food. 
The man stared, and ran back up the one 
street of the village shouting for the priest, 
who was a big, fat man dressed in white, with 
a red and yellow mark on his forehead. The 
priest came to the gate, and with him at least 
a hundred people, who stared and talked and 
shouted and pointed at Mowgli. 

“ They have no manners, these Men Folk,” 
said Mowgli to himself. “ Only the gray ape 
would behave as they do.” So he threw back 
his long hair and frowned at the crowd. 

“ What is there to be afraid of ” said the 
priest. “ Look at the marks on his arms and 
legs. They are the bites of wolves. He is 
but a wolf-child run away from the jungle.” 

Of course, in playing together, the cubs 
had often nipped Mowgli harder than they 
intended, and there were white scars all over 
his arms and legs. But he would have been 
the last person in the world to call these bites; 
for he knew what real biting meant. 



114 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


“ Arre! Arrel ” said two or three women 
together. ‘‘ To be bitten bj wolves, poor 
child! He is a handsome boy. He has eyes 
like red fire. By my honor, Messua, he is 
not unlike thy boy that was taken by the 
tiger.” 

“ Let me look,” said a woman with heavy 
copper rings on her wrists and ankles, 
and she peered at Mowgli under the palm 
of her hand. “ Indeed he is not. He is 
thinner, but he has the very look of my 
boy.” 

The priest was a clever man, and he knew 
that Messua was wife to the richest villager 
in the place. So he looked up at the sky for 
a minute, and said solemnly: “ What the 

jungle has taken the jungle has restored. 
Take the boy into thy house, my sister, and 
forget not to honor the priest who sees so 
far into the lives of men.” 

“ By the Bull that bought me,” said Mow¬ 
gli to himself, ‘‘ but all this talking is like 





“TIGER! TIGER!” 


115 


another looking-over by the Pack! Well, if 
I am a man, a man I must become.” 

The crowd parted as the woman beckoned 
Mowgli to her hut, where there was a red 
lacquered bedstead, a great earthen grain- 
chest with curious raised patterns on it, half 
a dozen copper cooking-pots, an image of a 
Hindu god in a little alcove, and on the wall 
a real looking-glass, such as they sell at the 
country fairs. 

She gave him a long drink of milk and 
some bread, and then she laid her hand on his 
head and looked into his eyes; for she thought 
perhaps that he might be her real son come 
back from the jungle where the tiger had 
taken him. So she said: “ Nathoo, O Na- 
thoo! ” Mowgli did not show that he knew 
the name. “ Dost thou not remember the 
day when I gave thee thy new shoes ? ” 
She touched his foot, and it was almost as 
hard as horn. “ No,” she said, sorrowfully; 
‘‘ those feet have never worn shoes, but thou 




116 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


art very like my Nathoo, and thou shalt be 
my son.” 

Mowgli was uneasy, because he had never 
been under a roof before; but as he looked at 
the thatch, he saw that he could tear it out 
any time if he wanted to get away, and that 
the window had no fastenings. “ What is 
the good of a man,” he said to himself at last, 
“ if he does not understand man’s talk ? 
Now I am as silly and dumb as a man would 
be with us in the jungle. I must learn their 
talk.” 

It was not for fun that he had learned 
while he was with the wolves to imitate the 
challenge of bucks in the jungle and the grunt 
of the little wild pig. So as soon as Messua 
pronounced a word Mowgli would imitate it 
almost perfectly, and before dark he had 
learned the names of many things in the hut. 

There was a difficulty at bedtime, because 
Mowgli would not sleep under anything that 
looked so like a panther-trap as that hut. 




“TIGER! TIGER!” 


117 


and when they shut the door he went through 
the window. ‘‘ Give him his will,” said Mes- 
sua’s husband. “ Remember he can never till 
now have slept on a bed. If he is indeed 
sent in the place of our son he will not run 
away.” 

So Mowgli stretched himself in some long, 
clean grass at the edge of the field, but before 
he had closed his eyes a soft gray nose poked 
him under the chin. 

“Phew!” said Gray Brother (he was the 
eldest of Mother Wolf’s cubs). “ This is a 
poor reward for following thee twenty miles. 
Thou smellest of wood-smoke and cattle — 
altogether like a man already. Wake, Little 
Brother; I bring news.” 

“ Are all well in the jungle.^ ” said Mow- 
gli, hugging him. 

“ All except the wolves that were burned 
with the Red Flower. Now, listen. Shere 
Khan has gone away to hunt far off till his 
coat grows again, for he is badly singed. 




118 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


When he returns he swears that he will lay 
thy bones in the Waingunga.” 

“ There are two words to that. I also have 
made a little promise. But news is always 
good. I am tired to-night,— very tired 
with new things, Gray Brother,— but bring 
me the news always.” 

“ Thou wilt not forget that thou art a 
wolf Men will not make thee forget ” 
said Gray Brother, anxiously. 

“ Never. I will always remember that I 
love thee and all in our cave; but also I will 
always remember that I have been cast out of 
the Pack.” 

“ And that thou mayest be cast out of 
another pack. Men are only men. Little 
Brother, and their talk is like the talk of 
frogs in a pond. When I come down here 
again, I will wait for thee in the bamboos at 
the edge of the grazing-ground.” 

For three months after that night Mowgli 
hardly ever left the village gate, he was so 



‘‘TIGER! TIGER!’’ 119 


busy learning the ways and customs of men. 
First he had to wear a cloth round him, which 
annoyed him horribly; and then he had to 
learn about money, which he did not in the 
least understand, and about plowing, of 
which he did not see the use. Then the little 
children in the village made him very angry. 
Luckily, the Law of the Jungle had taught 
him to keep his temper, for in the jungle, life 
and food depend on keeping your temper; 
but when they made fun of him because he 
would not play games or fly kites, or because 
he mispronounced some word, only the knowl¬ 
edge that it was unsportsmanlike to kill little 
naked cubs kept him from picking them up 
and breaking them in two. 

He did not know his own strength in the 
least. In the jungle he knew he was weak 
compared with the beasts, but in the village, 
people said he was as strong as a bull. 

And Mowgli had not the faintest idea of 
the difference that caste makes between man 




120 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


and man. When the potter’s donkey slipped 
in the clay-pit, Mowgli hauled it out by the 
tail, and helped to stack the pots for their 
journey to the market at Khanhiwara. That 
was very shocking, too, for the potter is a 
low-caste man, and his donkey is worse. 
When the priest scolded him, Mowgli threat¬ 
ened to put him on the donkey, too, and the 
priest told Messua’s husband that Mowgli 
had better be set to work as soon as possible; 
and the village head-man told Mowgli that 
he would have to go out with the buffaloes 
next day, and herd them while they grazed. 
No one was more pleased than Mowgli; and 
that night, because he had been appointed a 
servant of the village, as it were, he went off 
to a circle that met every evening on a ma¬ 
sonry platform under a great fig-tree. It was 
the village club, and the head-man and the 
watchman and the barber (who knew all 
the gossip of the village), and old Buldeo, the 
village hunter, who had a Tower musket, met 





THE VILLAGE CLUB 


\ 



/ 






















‘‘TIGER! TIGER!’’ 


121 


and smoked. The monkeys sat and talked in 
the upper branches, and there was a hole 
under the platform where a cobra lived, and 
he had his little platter of milk every night 
because he was sacred; and the old men sat 
around the tree and talked, and pulled at the 
big huqas (the water-pipes) till far into the 
night. They told wonderful tales of gods 
and men and ghosts; and Buldeo told even 
more wonderful ones of the ways of beasts in 
the jungle, till the eyes of the children sitting 
outside the circle bulged out of their heads. 
Most of the tales were about animals, for the 
jungle was always at their door. The deer 
and the wild pig grubbed up their crops, and 
now and again the tiger carried off a man 
at twilight, within sight of the village gates. 

Mowgli, who naturally knew something 
about what they were talking of, had to cover 
his face not to show that he was laughing, 
while Buldeo, the Tower musket across his 
knees, climbed on from one wonderful story 




122 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


to another, and Mowgli’s shoulders shook. 

Buldeo was explaining how the tiger that 
had carried away Messua’s son was a ghost- 
tiger, and his body was inhabited by the 
ghost of a wicked old money-lender, who had 
died some years ago. “ And I know that this 
is true,” he said, ‘‘ because Purun Dass al¬ 
ways limped from the blow that he got in 
a riot when his account-books were burned, 
and the tiger that I speak of he limps, too, 
for the tracks of his pads are unequal.” 

“ True, true; that must be the truth,” said 
the graybeards, nodding together. 

“ Are all these tales such cobwebs and 
moon-talk?” said Mowgli. ‘‘That tiger 
limps because he was bom lame, as every one 
knows. To talk of the soul of a money¬ 
lender in a beast that never had the courage 
of a jackal is child’s talk.” 

Buldeo was speechless with surprise for a 
moment, and the head-man stared. 

“ Oho! It is the jungle brat, is it? ” said 




‘‘TIGER! TIGER!” 


123 


Buldeo. “ If thou art so wise, better bring 
his hide to Khanhiwara, for the Government 
has set a hundred rupees [$30] on his life. 
Better still, do not talk when thy elders 
speak.” 

Mowgli rose to go. “ All the evening I 
have lain here listening,” he called back over 
his shoulder, “ and, except once or twice, Bul¬ 
deo has not said one word of truth concerning 
the jungle, which is at his very doors. How, 
then, shall I believe the tales of ghosts and 
gods and goblins which he says he has seen ? ” 

“ It is full time that boy went to herding,” 
said the head-man, while Buldeo puffed and 
snorted at Mowgli’s impertinence. 

The custom of most Indian villages is for a 
few boys to take the cattle and buffaloes out 
to graze in the early morning, and bring 
them back at night; and the very cattle that 
would trample a white man to death allow 
themselves to be banged and bullied and 
shouted at by children that hardly come up 




124 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


to their noses. So long as the boys keep 
with the herds they are safe, for not even 
the tiger will charge a mob of cattle. But if 
they straggle to pick flowers or hunt lizards, 
they are sometimes carried off. Mowgli went 
through the village street in the dawn, sitting 
on the back of Rama, the great herd bull; and 
the slaty-blue buffaloes, with their long, back¬ 
ward-sweeping horns and savage eyes, rose 
out of their byres, one by one, and followed 
him, and Mowgli made it very clear to the 
children with him that he was the master. 
He beat the buffaloes with a long, polished 
bamboo, and told Kamya, one of the boys, 
to graze the cattle by themselves, while he 
went on with the buffaloes, and to be very 
careful not to stray away from the herd. 

An Indian grazing-ground is all rocks and 
scrub and tussocks and little ravines, among 
which the herds scatter and disappear. The 
buffaloes generally keep to the pools and 
muddy places, where they he wallowing or 



“TIGER! TIGER!” 


125 


basking in the warm mud for hours. Mowgli 
drove them on to the edge of the plain where 
the Waingunga River came out of the jungle; 
then he dropped from Rama’s neck, trotted 
off to a bamboo clump, and found Gray 
Brother. ‘‘ Ah,” said Gray Brother, “ I have 
waited here very many days. What is the 
meaning of this cattle-herding work F ” 

‘‘ It is an order,” said Mowgli. “ I am a 
village herd for a while. What news of 
Shere Khan ? ” 

“ He has come back to this country, and 
has waited here a long time for thee. Now 
he has gone off again, for the game is scarce. 
But he means to kill thee.” 

‘‘ Very good,” said Mowgli. “ So long as 
he is away do thou or one of the brothers sit 
on that rock, so that I can see thee as I come 
out of the village. When he comes back 
wait for me in the ravine by the dhdk-tree in 
the center of the plain. We need not walk 
into Shere Khan’s mouth.” 




U6 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


Then Mowgli picked out a shady place, 
and lay down and slept while the buffaloes 
grazed round him. Herding in India is one 
of the laziest things in the world. The cattle 
move and crunch, and lie down, and move 
on again, and they do not even low. They 
only grunt, and the buffaloes very seldom say 
anything, but get down into the muddy pools 
one after another, and work their way into 
the mud till only their noses and staring 
china-blue eyes show above the surface, and 
there they lie like logs. The sun makes the 
rocks dance in the heat, and the herd-children 
hear one kite (never any more) whistling al¬ 
most out of sight overhead, and they know 
that if they died, or a cow died, that kite 
would sweep down, and the next kite miles 
away would see him drop and follow, and the 
next, and the next, and almost before they 
were dead there would be a score of hungry 
kites come out of nowhere. Then they sleep 
and wake and sleep again, and weave little 




“TIGER! TIGER!” 


127 




baskets of dried grass and put grasshoppers 
in them; or catch two praying-mantises and 
make them fight; or string a necklace of red 
and black jungle-nuts; or watch a lizard 
basking on a rock, or a snake hunting a frog 
near the wallows. Then they sing long, long 
songs with odd native quavers at the end of 
them, and the day seems longer than most 
people’s whole lives, and perhaps they make 
a mud castle with mud figures of men and 
horses and buffaloes, and put reeds into the 
men’s hands, and pretend that they are kings 
and the figures are their armies, or that they 
are gods to be worshiped. Then evening 
comes, and the children call, and the buffaloes 
lumber out of the sticky mud with noises like 
gun-shots going off one after the other, and 
they all string across the gray plain back 
to the twinkling village lights. 

Day after day Mowgli would lead the buf¬ 
faloes out to their wallows, and day after 
day he would see Gray Brother’s back a mile 




128 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


and a half away across the plain (so he knew 
that Shere Khan had not come back), and 
day after day he would lie on the grass listen¬ 
ing to the noise round him, and dreaming of 
old days in the jungle. If Shere Khan had 
made a false step with his lame paw up in 
the jungles by the Waingunga, Mowgli would 
have heard him in those long still mornings. 

At last a day came when he did not see 
Gray Brother at the signal place, and he 
laughed and headed the buffaloes for the ra¬ 
vine by the dhak-ive^, which was all covered 
with golden-red flowers. There sat Gray 
Brother, every bristle on his back lifted. 

“ He has hidden for a month to throw thee 
off thy guard. He crossed the ranges last 
night with Tabaqui, hot-foot on thy trail,” 
said the wolf, panting. 

Mowgli frowned. “ I am not afraid of 
Shere Khan, but Tabaqui is very cunning.” 

“ Have no fear,” said Gray Brother, lick¬ 
ing his lips a little. “ I met Tabaqui in the 



“TIGER! TIGER!” 


129 


dawn. Now he is telling all his wisdom to 
the kites, but he told me everything before I 
broke his back. Shere Khan’s plan is to wait 
for thee at the village gate this evening — for 
thee and for no one else. He is lying up 
now in the big dry ravine of the Wain- 
gunga.” 

“ Has he eaten to-day, or does he hunt 
empty” said Mowgli, for the answer meant 
life or death to him. 

“ He killed at dawn,— a pig,— and he has 
drunk too. Remember, Shere Khan could 
never fast even for the sake of revenge.” 

“ Oh! Fool, fool! What a cub’s cub it 
is! Eaten and drunk too, and he thinks that 
I shall wait till he has slept! Now, where 
does he lie up.^ If there were but ten of 
us we might pull him down as he lies. These 
buffaloes will not charge unless they wind 
him, and I cannot speak their language. Can 
we get behind his track so that they may 
smell it? ” 




130 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


‘‘ He swam far down the Waingunga to 
cut that off,” said Gray Brother. 

‘‘ Tabaqui told him that, I know. He 
would never have thought of it alone.” Mow- 
gli stood with his finger in his mouth, think¬ 
ing. The big ravine of the Waingunga. 
That opens out on the plain not half a mile 
from here. I can take the herd round through 
the jungle to the head of the ravine and 
then sweep down — but he would slink out 
at the foot. We must block that end. Gray 
Brother, canst thou cut the herd in two for 
me.^ ” 

‘‘ Not I, perhaps — but I have brought a 
wise helper.” Gray Brother trotted off and 
dropped into a hole. Then there lifted up a 
huge gray head that Mowgli knew well, and 
the hot air was filled with the most desolate 
cry of all the jungle — the hunting-howl of a 
wolf at midday. 

‘‘ Akela! Akela! ” said Mowgli, clapping 
his hands. “ I might have known that thou 



‘‘TIGER! TIGER!” 


131 


wouldst not forget me. We have a big work 
in hand. Cut the herd in two, Akela. Keep 
the cows and calves together, and the bulls 
and the plow-buffaloes by themselves.” 

The two wolves ran, ladies’-chain fashion, 
in and out of the herd, which snorted and 
threw up its head, and separated into two 
clumps. In one the cow-buffaloes stood, with 
their calves in the center, and glared and 
pawed, ready, if a wolf would only stay still, 
to charge down and trample the life out of 
him. In the other the bulls and the young 
bulls snorted and stamped; but, though they 
looked more imposing, they were much less 
dangerous, for they had no calves to protect. 
No six men could have divided the herd so 
neatly. 

“ What orders I ” panted Akela. “ They 
are trying to join again.” 

Mowgli slipped on to Rama’s back. 
“ Drive the bulls away to the left, Akela. 
Gray Brother, when we are gone hold the 




132 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


cows together, and drive them into the foot 
of the ravine.” 

“ How far? ” said Gray Brother, panting 
and snapping. 

“ Till the sides are higher than Shere Khan 
can jump,” shouted Mowgli. “ Keep them 
there till we come down.” The bulls swept 
off as Akela bayed, and Gray Brother stopped 
in front of the cows. They charged down on 
him, and he ran just before them to the foot 
of the ravine, as Akela drove the bulls far 
to the left. 

Well done! Another charge and they 
are fairly started. Careful, now — careful, 
Akela. A snap too much, and the bulls will 
charge. Hujah! This is wilder work than 
driving black-buck. Didst thou think these 
creatures could move so swiftly? ” Mowgli 
called. 

I have — have hunted these too in my 
time,” gasped Akela in the dust. ‘‘ Shall I 
turn them into the jungle?” 




‘‘TIGER! TIGER!” 


133 


“ Ay, turn! Swiftly turn them. Rama is 
mad with rage. Oh, if I could only tell him 
what I need of him to-day! ” 

The bulls were turned to the right this 
time, and crashed into the standing thicket. 
The other herd-children, watching with the 
cattle half a mile away, hurried to the village 
as fast as their legs could carry them, crying 
that the buffaloes had gone mad and run 
away. 

But Mowgli’s plan was simple enough. 
All he wanted to do was to make a big circle 
uphill and get at the head of the ravine, and 
then take the bulls down it and catch Shere 
Khan between the bulls and the cows, for he 
knew that after a meal and a full drink Shere 
Khan would not be in any condition to fight 
or to clamber up the sides of the ravine. He 
was soothing the buffaloes now by voice, and 
Akela had dropped far to the rear, only whim¬ 
pering once or twice to hurry the rear-guard. 
It was a long, long circle, for they did not 




134 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


wish to get too near the ravine and give Shere 
Khan warning. At last Mowgli rounded up 
the bewildered herd at the head of the ravine 
on a grassy patch that sloped steeply down 
to the ravine itself. From that height you 
could see across the tops of the trees down 
to the plain below; but what Mowgli looked 
at was the sides of the ravine, and he saw 
with a great deal of satisfaction that they ran 
nearly straight up and down, and the vines 
and creepers that hung over them would give 
no foothold to a tiger who wanted to get 
out. 

“ Let them breathe, Akela,” he said, holding 
up his hand. “ They have not winded him 
yet. Let them breathe. I must tell Shere 
Khan who comes. We have him in the trap.” 

He put his hands to his mouth and shouted 
down the ravine,— it was almost like shouting 
down a tunnel,— and the echoes jumped from 
rock to rock. 

After a long time there came back the 




“TIGER! TIGER!’ 


135 


drawling, sleepy snarl of a full-fed tiger 
just awakened. 

“ Who calls ? ” said Shere Khan, and a 
splendid peacock fluttered up out of the ra¬ 
vine, screeching. 

“ I, Mowgli. Cattle-thief, it is time to 
come to the Council Rock! Down — hurry 
them down, Akela. Down, Rama, down! ” 

The herd paused for an instant at the edge 
of the slope, but Akela gave tongue in the full 
hunting-yell, and they pitched over one after 
the other just as steamers shoot rapids, the 
sand and stones spurting up round them. 
Once started, there was no chance of stopping, 
and before they were fairly in the bed of the 
ravine Rama winded Shere Khan and bel¬ 
lowed. 

“ Ha! Ha! ” said Mowgli, on his back. 

Now thou knowest! ” and the torrent of 
black horns, foaming muzzles, and staring 
eyes whirled down the ravine like boulders in 
flood-time; the weaker buffaloes being shoul- 



136 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


dered out to the sides of the ravine where they 
tore through the creepers. They knew what 
the business was before them — the terrible 
charge of the buffalo-herd, against which no 
tiger can hope to stand. Shere Khan heard 
the thunder of their hoofs, picked himself up, 
and lumbered down the ravine, looking from 
side to side for some way of escape, but the 
walls of the ravine were straight, and he had 
to keep on, heavy with his dinner and his 
drink, willing to do anything rather than 
fight. The herd splashed through the pool 
he had just left, bellowing till the narrow cut 
rang. Mowgli heard an answering bellow 
from the foot of the ravine, saw Shere Khan 
turn (the tiger knew if the worst came to the 
worst it was better to meet the bulls than the 
cows with their calves), and then Rama 
tripped, stumbled, and went on again over 
something soft, and, with the bulls at his 
heels, crashed full into the other herd, while 
the weaker buffaloes were lifted clean off their 




SHEKE KHAN IN THE JUNGLE 











V 





^‘TIGER! TIGER!” 


137 


feet by the shock of the meeting. That 
charge carried both herds out into the plain, 
goring and stamping and snorting. Mowgli 
watched his time, and slipped off Rama’s neck, 
laying about him right and left with his 
stick. 

“ Quick, Akela! Break them up. Scatter 
them, or they will be fighting one another. 
Drive them away, Akela. Haiy Rama! Hat! 
hai! hat! my children. Softly now, softly! 
It is all over.” 

Akela and Gray Brother ran to and fro 
nipping the buffaloes’ legs, and though the 
herd wheeled once to charge up the ravine 
again, Mowgli managed to turn Rama, and 
the others followed him to the wallows. 

Shere Khan needed no more trampling. 
He was dead, and the kites were coming for 
him already. 

‘‘ Brothers, that was a dog’s death,” said 
Mowgli, feeling for the knife he always 
carried in a sheath round his neck now that 



138 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


he lived with men. “ But he would never 
have shown fight. His hide will look well on 
the Council Rock. We must get to work 
swiftly.” 

A boy trained among men would never have 
dreamed of skinning a ten-foot tiger alone, 
but Mowgli knew better than any one else 
how an animal’s skin is fitted on, and how it 
can be taken off. But it was hard work, and 
Mowgli slashed and tore and grunted for an 
hour, while the wolves lolled out their tongues, 
or came forward and tugged as he ordered 
them. 

Presently a hand fell on his shoulder, and 
looking up he saw Buldeo with the Tower 
musket. The children had told the village 
about the buffalo stampede, and Buldeo went 
out angrily, only too anxious to correct Mow¬ 
gli for not taking better care of the herd. 
The wolves dropped out of sight as soon as 
they saw the man coming. 

“ What is this folly ” said Buldeo, angrily. 



“TIGER! TIGER!” 139 


“To think that thou canst skin a tiger! 
Where did the buffaloes kill him? It is the 
Lame Tiger, too, and there is a hundred ru¬ 
pees on his head. Well, well, we will over¬ 
look thy letting the herd run off, and perhaps 
I will give thee one of the rupees of the re¬ 
ward when I have taken the skin to Khanhi- 
wara.” He fumbled in his waist-cloth for flint 
and steel, and stooped down to singe Shere 
Khan’s whiskers. Most native hunters singe 
a tiger’s whiskers to prevent his ghost haunt¬ 
ing them. 

“ Hum! ” said Mowgli, half to himself as 
he ripped back the skin of a fore paw. “ So 
thou wilt take the hide to Khanhiwara for the 
reward, and perhaps give me one rupee ? 
Now it is in my mind that I need the skin for 
my own use. Heh! old man, take away that 
fire! ” 

“ What talk is this to the chief hunter of 
the village? Thy luck and the stupidity of 
thy buffaloes have helped thee to this kill. 



140 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


The tiger has just fed, or he would have gone 
twenty miles by this time. Thou canst not 
even skin him properly, little beggar-brat, 
and forsooth I, Buldeo, must be told not to 
singe his whiskers. Mowgli, I will not give 
thee one anna of the reward, but only a very 
big beating. Leave the carcass ! ” 

‘‘ By the Bull that bought me,” said Mow¬ 
gli, who was trying to get at the shoulder, 
“ must I stay babbling to an old ape all 
noon.^ Here, Akela, this man plagues me.” 

Buldeo, who was still stooping over Shere 
Khan’s head, found himself sprawling on the 
grass, with a gray wolf standing over him, 
while Mowgli went on skinning as though he 
were alone in all India. 

“ Ye-es,” he said, between his teeth. 
‘‘ Thou art altogether right, Buldeo. Thou 
wilt never give me one anna of the reward. 
There is an old war between this lame tiger 
and myself — a very old war, and — I have 
won.” 




“TIGER! TIGER!” 


141 


To do Buldeo justice, if he had been ten 
years younger he would have taken his chance 
with Akela had he met the wolf in the woods, 
but a wolf who obeyed the orders of this boy 
who had private wars with man-eating tigers 
was not a common animal. It was sorcery, 
magic of the worst kind, thought Buldeo, and 
he wondered whether the amulet round his 
neck would protect him. He lay as still as 
still, expecting every minute to see Mowgli 
turn into a tiger, too. 

“ Maharaj ! Great King,” he said at last, 
in a husky whisper. 

‘‘ Yes,” said Mowgli, without turning his 
head, chuckling a little. 

“ I am an old man. I did not know that 
thou wast anything more than a herd-boy. 
May I rise up and go away, or will thy 
servant tear me to pieces ? ” 

“ Go, and peace go with thee. Only, an¬ 
other time do not meddle with my game. Let 
him go, Akela.” 




142 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


Buldeo hobbled away to the village as fast 
as he could, looking back over his shoulder 
in case Mowgli should change into something 
terrible. When he got to the village he told 
a tale of magic and enchantment and sorcery 
that made the priest look very grave. 

Mowgli went on with his work, but it was 
nearly twilight before he and the wolves 
had drawn the great gay skin clear of the 
body. 

“ Now we must hide this and take the buf¬ 
faloes home! Help me to herd them, Akela.” 

The herd rounded up in the misty twilight, 
and when they got near the village Mowgli 
saw lights, and heard the conches and bells 
in the temple blowing and banging. Half the 
village seemed to be waiting for him by the 
gate. “ That is because I have killed Shere 
Khan,” he said to himself; but a shower of 
stones whistled about his ears, and the 
villagers shouted: “ Sorcerer! Wolf’s brat! 
Jungle-demon! Go away! Get hence quickly. 




THE KETURN OF THE BUFFALO HERD 


s 












I 






“TIGER! TIGER!” 


143 


or the priest will turn thee into a wolf again. 
Shoot, Buldeo, shoot! ” 

The old Tower musket went off with a bang, 
and a young buffalo bellowed in pain. 

“ More sorcery! ” shouted the villagers. 
“ He can turn bullets. Buldeo, that was thy 
buffalo.” 

“ Now what is this.?* ” said Mowgli, bewil¬ 
dered, as the stones flew thicker. 

“ They are not unlike the Pack, these 
brothers of thine,” said Akela, sitting down 
composedly. “ It is in my head that, if bul¬ 
lets mean anything they would cast thee out.” 

‘‘ Wolf! Wolf’s cub! Go away! ” shouted 
the priest, waving a sprig of the sacred tulsi 
plant. 

“ Again Last time it was because I was 
a man. This time it is because I am a wolf. 
Let us go, Akela.” 

A woman — it was Messua — ran across 
to the herd, and cried: “ Oh, my son, my 

son! They say thou art a sorcerer who can 




144 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


turn himself into a beast at will. I do not 
believe, but go away or they will kill thee. 
Buldeo says thou art a wizard, but I know 
thou hast avenged Nathoo’s death.” 

Come back, Messua! ” shouted the crowd. 

Come back, or we will stone thee.” 

Mowgli laughed a little short ugly laugh, 
for a stone had hit him in the mouth. “ Run 
back, Messua. This is one of the foolish tales 
they tell under the big tree at dusk. I have 
at least paid for thy son’s life. Farewell; 
and run quickly, for I shall send the herd in 
more swiftly than their brickbats. I am no 
wizard, Messua. Farewell! 

‘‘ Now, once more, Akela,” he cried. 
“ Bring the herd in.” 

The buffaloes were anxious enough to get 
to the village. They hardly needed Akela’s 
yell, but charged through the gate like a 
whirlwind, scattering the crowd right and left. 

Keep count! ” shouted Mowgli, scornful¬ 
ly. “ It may be that I have stolen one of them. 



“TIGER! TIGER!” 


145 


Keep count, for I will do your herding no 
more. Fare you well, children of men, and 
thank Messua that I do not come in with my 
wolves and hunt you up and down your street.” 

He turned on his heel and walked away 
with the Lone Wolf; and as he looked up at 
the stars he felt happy. “No more sleeping 
in traps for me, Akela. Let us get Shere 
Khan’s skin and go away. No; we will not 
hurt the village, for Messua was kind to me.” 

When the moon rose over the plain, making 
it look all milky, the horrified villagers saw 
Mowgli with two wolves at his heels and a 
bundle on his head, trotting across at the 
steady wolf’s trot that eats up the long miles 
like fire. Then they banged the temple bells 
and blew the conches louder than ever; and 
Messua cried, and Buldeo embroidered the 
story of his adventures in the jungle, till he 
ended by saying that Akela stood up on his 
hind legs and talked like a man. 

The moon was just going down when Mow- 



146 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


gli and the two wolves came to the hill of the 
Council Rock, and they stopped at Mother 
Wolf’s cave. 

“ They have cast me out from the Man 
Pack, Mother,” shouted Mowgli, “ but I come 
with the hide of Shere Khan to keep my word.” 
Mother Wolf walked stiffly from the cave 
with the cubs behind her, and her eyes glowed 
as she saw the skin. 

‘‘ I told him on that day, when he crammed 
his head and shoulders into this cave, hunting 
for thy life. Little Frog — I told him that the 
hunter would be the hunted. It is well done.” 

“ Little Brother, it is well done,” said a 
deep voice in the thicket. ‘‘We were lonely 
in the jungle without thee,” and Bagheera 
came running to Mowgli’s bare feet. They 
clambered up the Council Rock together, and 
Mowgli spread the skin out on the flat stone 
where Akela used to sit, and pegged it down 
with four slivers of bamboo, and Akela lay 
down upon it, and called the old call to the 



‘‘TIGER! TIGER!” 


147 


Council, “Look — look well, O Wolves!” 
exactly as he had called when Mowgli was 
first brought there. 

Ever since Akela had been deposed, the 
Pack had been without a leader, hunting and 
fighting at their own pleasure. But they an¬ 
swered the call from habit, and some of them 
were lame from the traps they had fallen 
into, and some limped from shot-wounds, and 
some were mangy from eating bad food, and 
many were missing; but they came to the 
Council Rock, all that were left of them, and 
saw Shere Khan’s striped hide on the rock, 
and the huge claws dangling at the end of 
the empty, dangling feet. It was then that 
Mowgli made up a song without any rhymes, a 
song that came up into his throat all by itself, 
and he shouted it aloud, leaping up and down 
on the rattling skin, and beating time with 
his heels till he had no more breath left, while 
Gray Brother and Akela howled between the 


verses. 



148 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


“ Look well, O Wolves. Have I kept my 
word?” said Mowgli when he had finished; 
and the wolves bayed Yes,” and one tattered 
wolf howled: 

“ Lead us again, O Akela. Lead us again, 
O Man-cub, for we be sick of this lawlessness, 
and we would be the Free People once more.” 

‘‘ Nay,” purred Bagheera, “ that may not 
be. When ye are full-fed, the madness may 
come upon ye again. Not for nothing are 
ye called the Free People. Ye fought for 
freedom, and it is yours. Eat it, O Wolves.” 

“ Man Pack and Wolf Pack have cast me 
out,” said Mowgli. “ Now I will hunt alone 
in the jungle.” 

“ And we will hunt with thee,” said the four 
cubs. 

So Mowgli went away and hunted with the 
four cubs in the jungle from that day on. 
But he was not always alone, because years 
afterward he became a man and married. 

But that is a story for grown-ups. 




“TIGER! TIGER!” 


149 


MOWGLI’S SONG 

THAT HE SANG AT THE COUNCIL ROCK WHEN HE 
DANCED ON SHERE KHAN’s HIDE 

The Song of Mowgli — I, Mowgli, am singing. 
Let the jungle listen to the things I have 
done. 

Shere Khan said he would kill — would kill! 
At the gates in the twilight he would kill 
Mowgli, the Frog! 

He ate and he drank. Drink deep, Shere Khan, 
for when wilt thou drink again? Sleep 
and dream of the kill. 

I am alone on the grazing-grounds. Gray 
Brother, come to me! Come to me, Lone 
Wolf, for there is big game afoot. 

Bring up the great bull-buffaloes, the blue¬ 
skinned herd-bulls with the angry eyes. 
Drive them to and fro as I order. 

Sleepest thou still, Shere Khan? Wake, O 
wake! Here come I, and the bulls are be¬ 
hind. 

Rama, the King of the Buffaloes, stamped with 
his foot. Waters of the Waingunga, 
whit her w ent Shere Khan? 

He is not Ikki to dig holes, nor Mao, the Pea- 




150 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


cock, that he should fly. He is not Mang, 
the Bat, to hang in the branches. Little 
bamboos that creak together, tell me where 
he ran.? 

Owl He is there. Ahoo! He is there. Un¬ 
der the feet of Rama lies the Lame One! 
Up, Shere Khan! Up and kill! Here is 
meat; break the necks of the bulls! 

Hsh! He is asleep. We will not wake him, 
for his strength is very great. The kites 
have come down to see it. The black ants 
have come up to know it. There is a great 
assembly in his honor. 

Alalal I have no cloth to wrap me. The kites 
will see that I am naked. I am ashamed to 
meet all these people. 

Lend me thy coat, Shere Khan. Lend me thy 
gay striped coat that I may go to the Coun¬ 
cil Rock. 

By the Bull that brought me I have made a 
promise — a little promise. Only thy coat 
is lacking before I keep my word. 

With the knife — with the knife that men use 
— with the knife of the hunter, the man, I 
will stoop down for my gift. 

Waters of the Waingunga, bear witness that 
Shere Khan gives me his coat for the love 



“TIGER! TIGER!” 


151 


that he bears me. Pull^ Gray Brother! 
Pull, Akela! Heavy is the hide of Shere 
Khan. 

The Man Pack are angry. They throw stones 
and talk child’s talk. My mouth is bleed¬ 
ing. Let us run away. 

Through the night, through the hot night, run 
swiftly with me, my brothers. We will 
leave the lights of the village and go to the 
low moon. 

Waters of the Waingunga, the Man Pack have 
cast me out. I did them no harm, but they 
were afraid of me. Why? 

Wolf Pack, ye have cast me out too. The jun¬ 
gle is shut to me and the village gates are 
shut. Why ? 

As Mang flies between the beasts and the birds 
so fly I between the village and the jun¬ 
gle. Why ? 

I dance on the hide of Shere Khan, but my 
heart is very heavy. My mouth is cut 
and wounded with the stones from the 
village, but my heart is very light be¬ 
cause I have come back to the jungle. 
Why? 

These two things fight together in me as the 
snakes fight in the spring. The water 




152 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


comes out of my eyes; yet I laugh while it 
falls. Why? 

I am two Mowglis, but the hide of Shere Khan 
is under my feet. 

All the jungle knows that I have killed Shere 
Khan. Look — look well, O Wolves! 

Ahae! My heart is heavy with the things that 
I do not understand. 












Oh! hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us. 

And black are the waters that sparkled so green. 
The moon, o’er the combers, looks downward to find 
us 

At rest in the hollows that rustle between. 

Where billow meets billow, there soft be thy pillow; 

Ah, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease! 

The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake 
thee. 

Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas. 

Seal Lullaby. 




THE WHITE SEAL 


A ll these things happened several years 
ago at a place called Novastoshnah, or 
North East Point, on the Island of St. Paul, 
away and away in the Bering Sea. Limmer- 
shin, the Winter Wren, told me the tale when 
he was blown on to the rigging of a steamer 
going to Japan, and I took him down into 
my cabin and warmed and fed him for a 
couple of days till he was fit to fly back to 
St. Paul’s again. Limmershin is a very 
odd little bird, but he knows how to tell the 
truth. 

Nobody comes to Novastoshnah except on 
business, and the only people who have regu¬ 
lar business there are the seals. They come 
155 


156 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


in the summer months by hundreds and hun¬ 
dreds of thousands out of the cold gray sea; 
for Novastoshnah Beach has the finest ac¬ 
commodation for seals of any place in all the 
world. 

Sea Catch knew that, and every spring 
would swim from whatever place he happened 
to be in — would swim like a torpedo-boat 
straight for Novastoshnah, and spend a 
month fighting with his companions for a good 
place on the rocks as close to the sea as 
possible. Sea Catch was fifteen years old, a 
huge gray fur-seal with almost a mane on 
his shoulders, and long, wicked dog-teeth. 
When he heaved himself up on his front flip¬ 
pers he stood more than four feet clear of 
the ground, and his weight, if any one had 
been bold enough to weigh him, was nearly 
seven hundred pounds. He was scarred all 
over with the marks of savage fights, but he 
was always ready for just one fight more. 
He would put his head on one side, as though 





THE WHITE SEAL 


157 


he were afraid to look his enemy in the face; 
then he would shoot it out like lightning, and 
when the big teeth were firmly fixed on the 
other seal’s neck, the other seal might get 
away if he could, but Sea Catch would not 
help him. 

Yet Sea Catch never chased a beaten seal, 
for that was against the Rules of the Beach. 
He only wanted room by the sea for his 
nursery; but as there were forty or fifty 
thousand other seals hunting for the same 
thing each spring, the whistling, bellowing, 
roaring, and blowing on the beach was some¬ 
thing frightful. 

From a little hill called Hutchinson’s Hill 
you could look over three and a half miles 
of ground covered with fighting seals; and 
the surf was dotted all over with the heads 
of seals hurrying to land and begin their 
share of the fighting. They fought in the 
breakers, they fought in the sand, and they 
fought on the smooth-worn basalt rocks of 



158 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


the nurseries; for they were just as stupid 
and unaccommodating as men. Their wives 
never came to the island until late in May or 
early in June, for they did not care to be 
torn to pieces; and the young two-, three-, and 
four-year-old seals who had not begun house¬ 
keeping went inland about half a mile through 
the ranks of the fighters and played about on 
the sand-dunes in droves and legions, and 
rubbed off every single green thing that grew. 
They were called the holluschickie,— the 
bachelors,— and there were perhaps two or 
three hundred thousand of them at Novastosh- 
nah alone. 

Sea Catch had just finished his forty-fifth 
fight one spring when Matkah, his soft, sleek, 
gentle-eyed wife came up out of the sea, and 
he caught her by the scruff of the neck and 
dumped her down on his reservation, saying 
gruffly: ‘‘ Late, as usual. Where have you 

been.J^ ” 

It was not the fashion for Sea Catch to eat 



1 


THE WHITE SEAL 159 

anything during the four months he stayed on 
the beaches, and so his temper was generally 
bad. Matkah knew better than to answer 
back. She looked around and cooed: “ How 
thoughtful of you. You’ve taken the old 
place again.” 

“ I should think I had,” said Sea Catch. 
“ Look at me! ” 

He was scratched and bleeding in twenty 
places; one eye was almost blind, and his sides 
were torn to ribbons. 

Oh, you men, you men! ” Matkah said, 
fanning herself with her hind flipper. “ Why 
can’t you be sensible and settle your places 
quietly? You look as though you had been 
fighting with the Killer Whale.” 

“ I have n’t been doing anything hut fight 
since the middle of May. The beach is dis¬ 
gracefully crowded this season. I’ve met 
at least a hundred seals from Lukannon 
Beach, house-hunting. Why can’t people 
stay where they belong? ” 




160 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


“ I’ve often thought we should be much 
happier if we hauled out at Otter Island in¬ 
stead of this crowded place,” said Matkah. 

‘‘ Bah! Only the holluschickie go to Otter 
Island. If we went there they would say we 
were afraid. We must preserve appearances, 
my dear.” 

Sea Catch sunk his head proudly between 
his fat shoulders and pretended to go to sleep 
for a few minutes, but all the time he was 
keeping a sharp lookout for a fight. Now 
that all the seals and their wives were on the 
land you could hear their clamor miles out to 
sea above the loudest gales. At the lowest 
counting there were over a million seals on 
the beach,— old seals, mother seals, tiny ba¬ 
bies, and holluschickie, fighting, scuffling, 
bleating, crawling, and playing together,— 
going down to the sea and coming up from 
it in gangs and regiments, lying over every 
foot of ground as far as the eye could reach, 
and skirmishing about in brigades through 




\ 


THE WHITE SEAL 161 

the fog. It is nearly always foggy at Novas- 
toshnah, except when the sun comes out and 
makes everything look all pearly and rain¬ 
bow-colored for a little while. 

Kotick, Matkah’s baby, was born in the 
middle of that confusion, and he was all head 
and shoulders, with pale, watery blue eyes, as 
tiny seals must be; but there was something 
about his coat that made his mother look at 
him very closely. 

“ Sea Catch,” she said, at last, “ our baby’s 
going to be white! ” 

“ Empty clam-shells and dry seaweed! ” 
snorted Sea Catch. “ There never has been 
such a thing in the world as a white seal.” 

I can’t help that,” said Matkah; “ there’s 
going to be now ” ; and she sang the low, 
crooning seal-song that all the mother seals 
sing to their babies: 

You must n’t swim till you ’re six weeks old. 

Or your head will be sunk by your heels; 

And summer gales and Killer Whales 
Are bad for baby seals. 




162 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


Are bad for baby seals, dear rat, 

As bad as bad can be; 

But splash and grow strong, 

And you can’t be wrong. 

Child of the Open Sea! 

Of course the little fellow did not under¬ 
stand the words at first. He paddled and 
scrambled about bj his mother’s side, and 
learned to scuffle out of the way when his 
father was fighting with another seal, and the 
two rolled and roared up and down the slip¬ 
pery rocks. Matkah used to go to sea to get 
things to eat, and the baby was fed only once 
in two days; but then he ate all he could, and 
throve upon it. 

The first thing he did was to crawl inland, 
and there he met tens of thousands of babies 
of his own age, and they played together like 
puppies, went to sleep on the clean sand, and 
played again. The old people in the nurse¬ 
ries took no notice of them, and the hollus- 
chickie kept to their own grounds, so the 
babies had a beautiful playtime. 



THE WHITE SEAL 163 


When Matkah came back from her deep- 
sea fishing she would go straight to their play¬ 
ground and call as a sheep calls for a lamb, 
and wait until she heard Kotick bleat. Then 
she would take the straightest of straight lines 
in his direction, striking out with her fore 
flippers and knocking the youngsters head 
over heels right and left. There were always 
a few hundred mothers hunting for their 
children through the playgrounds, and the 
babies were kept lively; but, as Matkah told 
Kotick, “ So long as you don’t lie in muddy 
water and get mange; or rub the hard sand 
into a cut or scratch; and so long as you never 
go swimming when there is a heavy sea, noth¬ 
ing will hurt you here.” 

Little seals can no more swim than little 
children, but they are unhappy till they learn. 
The first time that Kotick went down to the 
sea a wave carried him out beyond his depth, 
and his big head sank and his little hind flip¬ 
pers flew up exactly as his mother had told 




164 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


him in the song, and if the next wave had not 
thrown him back again he would have 
drowned. 

After that he learned to lie in a beach-pool 
and let the wash of the waves just cover him 
and lift him up while he paddled, but he al¬ 
ways kept his eye open for big waves that 
might hurt. He was two weeks learning to 
use his flippers; and all that while he floun¬ 
dered in and out of the water, and coughed 
and grunted and crawled up the beach and 
took cat-naps on the sand, and went back 
again, until at last he found that he truly be¬ 
longed to the water. 

Then you can imagine the times that he 
had with his companions, ducking under the 
rollers; or coming in on top of a comber and 
landing with a swash and a splutter as the 
big wave went whirling far up the beach; or 
standing up on his tail and scratching his 
head as the old people did; or playing “ I’m 
the King of the Castle ” on slippery, weedy 




THE WHITE SEAL 165 


rocks that just stuck out of the wash. Now 
and then he would see a thin fin, like a big 
shark’s fin, drifting along close to shore, and 
he knew that that was the Killer Whale, the 
Grampus, who eats young seals when he can 
get them; and Kotick would head for the 
beach like an arrow, and the fin would jig off 
slowly, as if it were looking for nothing at 
all. 

Late in October the seals began to leave 
St. Paul’s for the deep sea, by families and 
tribes, and there was no more fighting over 
the nurseries, and the holluschickie played 
anywhere they liked. “ Next year,” said 
Matkah to Kotick, “ you will be a hollus¬ 
chickie; but this year you must learn how to 
catch fish.” 

They set out together across the Pacific, 
and Matkah showed Kotick how to sleep on 
his back with his flippers tucked down by 
his side and his little nose just out of the 
water. No cradle is so comfortable as the 



166 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


long, rocking swell of the Pacific. When 
Kotick felt his skin tingle all over, Matkah 
told him he was learning the “ feel of the 
water,” and that tingly, prickly feelings 
meant bad weather coming, and he must swim 
hard and get away. 

“ In a little time,” she said, “ you ’ll 
know where to swim to, but just now we ’ll 
follow Sea Pig, the Porpoise, for he is very 
wise.” A school of porpoises were ducking 
and tearing through the water, and little 
Kotick followed them as fast as he could. 
‘‘How do you know where to go to.^” he 
panted. The leader of the school rolled his 
white eyes, and ducked under. “ My tail 
tingles, youngster,” he said. “ That means 
there’s a gale behind me. Come along! 
When you ’re south of the Sticky Water [he 
meant the Equator], and your tail tingles, 
that means there’s a gale in front of you 
and you must head north. Come along! 
The water feels bad here.” 



THE WHITE SEAL 167 


This was one of very many things that 
Kotick learned, and he was always learning. 
Matkah taught him how to follow the cod 
and the halibut along the under-sea banks, 
and wrench the rockling out of his hole among 
the weeds; how to skirt the wrecks lying a 
hundred fathoms below water, and dart like 
a rifle-bullet in at one porthole and out at 
another as the fishes ran; how to dance on the 
top of the waves when the lightning was racing 
all over the sky, and wave his flipper po¬ 
litely to the Stumpy-tailed Albatross and the 
Man-of-War Hawk as they went down the 
wind; how to jump three or four feet clear 
of the water, like a dolphin, flippers close to 
the side and tail curved; to leave the flying-fish 
alone because they are all bony; to take the 
shoulder-piece out of a cod at full speed ten 
fathoms deep; and never to stop and look at 
a boat or ship, but particularly a row boat. 
At the end of six months, what Kotick did not 
know about deep-sea fishing was not worth 



168 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


knowing, and all that time he never set flip¬ 
per on dry ground. 

One day, however, as he ,was lying half 
asleep in the warm water somewhere off the 
Island of Juan Fernandez, he felt faint and 
lazy all over, just as human people do when 
the spring is in their legs, and he remembered 
the good firm beaches of Novastoshnah seven 
thousand miles away; the games his compan¬ 
ions played, the smell of the seaweed, the 
seal-roar, and the fighting. That very min¬ 
ute he turned north, swimming steadily, and 
as he went on he met scores of his mates, all 
bound for the same place, and they said: 

Greeting, Kotick! This year we are all 
holluschickie, and we can dance the Fire- 
dance in the breakers off Lukannon and play 
on the new grass. But where did you get 
that coat.^ ” 

Kotick’s fur was almost pure white now, 
and though he felt very proud of it, he only 
said: “ Swim quickly! My bones are ach- 




THE WHITE SEAL 169 


ing for the land.” And so they all came to 
the beaches where they had been born and 
heard the old «eals, their fathers, fighting in 
the rolling mist. 

That night Kotick danced the Fire-dance 
with the yearling seals. The sea is full of 
fire on summer nights all the way down from 
Novastoshnah to Lukannon, and each seal 
leaves a wake like burning oil behind him, 
and a flaming flash when he jumps, and the 
waves break in great phosphorescent streaks 
and swirls. Then they went inland to the 
holluschickie grounds, and rolled up and down 
in the new wild wheat, and told stories of what 
they had done while they had been at sea. 
They talked about the Pacific as boys would 
talk about a wood that they had been nutting 
in, and if any one had understood them, he 
could have gone away and made such a chart 
of that ocean as never was. The three- 
and four-year-old holluschickie romped down 
from Hutchinson’s Hill, crying: “ Out of the 




170 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


way, youngsters! The sea is deep, and you 
don’t know all that’s in it yet. Wait till 
you’ve rounded the Horn. Hi, you yearling, 
where did you get that white coat? ” 

‘‘ I did n’t get it,” said Kotick; “ it grew.” 
And just as he was going to roll the speaker 
over, a couple of black-haired men with flat 
red faces came from behind a sand-dune, and 
Kotick, who had never seen a man before, 
coughed and lowered his head. The hollus- 
chickie just bundled off a few yards and sat 
staring stupidly. The men were no less than 
Kerick Booterin, the chief of the seal-hunters 
on the island, and Patalamon, his son. They 
came from a little village not half a mile from 
the seal nurseries, and they were deciding 
what seals they would drive up to the killing- 
pens (for the seals were driven just like 
sheep), to be turned into sealskin jackets 
later on. 

“ Ho! ” said Patalamon. ‘‘ Look! 
There’s a white seal! ” 



THE WHITE seal; 171 


Kerick Booterin turned nearly white under 
his oil and smoke, for he was an Aleut, and 
Aleuts are not clean people. Then he began 
to mutter a prayer. “ Don’t touch him, 
Patalamon. There has never been a white 
seal since — since I was born. Perhaps it is 
old Zaharrof’s ghost. He was lost last year 
in the big gale.” 

“ I’m not going near him,” said Patalamon. 
“ He’s unlucky. Do you really think he is 
old Zaharrof come back? I owe him for 
some gulls’ eggs.” 

“ Don’t look at him,” said Kerick. “ Head 
off that drove of four-year-olds. The men 
ought to skin two hundred to-day, but it’s 
the beginning of the season, and they are new 
to the work. A hundred will do. Quick! ” 

Patalamon rattled a pair of seal’s shoul¬ 
der-bones in front of a herd of holluschickie 
and they stopped dead, puffing and blowing. 
Then he stepped near, and the seals began to 
move, and Kerick headed them inland, and 




172 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


they never tried to get back to their compan¬ 
ions. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands 
of seals watched them being driven, but they 
went on playing just the same. Kotick was 
the only one who asked questions, and none 
of his companions could tell him anything, 
except that the men always drove seals in 
that way for six weeks or two months of 
every year. 

“ I am going to follow,” he said, and his 
eyes nearly popped out of his head as he 
shuffled along in the wake of the herd. 

“ The white seal is coming after us,” cried 
Patalamon. “ That’s the first time a seal 
has ever come to the killing-grounds alone.” 
“ That’s the first time a seal has ever come 
to the killing-grounds alone.” 

“ Hsh! Don’t look behind you,” said Ker- 
ick. “ It is Zaharrof’s ghost! I must speak 
to the priest about this.” 

The distance to the killing-grounds was only 
half a mile, but it took an hour to cover, be- 




THE WHITE SEAL 173 


cause if the seals went too fast Kerick knew 
that they would get heated and then their 
fur would come off in patches when they were 
skinned. So they went on very slowly, past 
Sea-Lion’s Neck, past Webster House, till 
they came to the Salt House just beyond the 
sight of the seals on the beach. Kotick fol¬ 
lowed, panting and wondering. He thought 
that he was at the world’s end, but the roar 
of the seal nurseries behind him sounded as 
loud as the roar of a train in a tunnel. Then 
Kerick sat down on the moss and pulled out 
a heavy pewter watch and let the drove cool 
off for thirty minutes, and Kotick could hear 
the fog dew dripping from the brim of his 
cap. Then ten or twelve men, each with an 
iron-bound club three or four feet long, came 
up, and Kerick pointed out one or two of the 
drove that were bitten by their companions or 
were too hot, and the men kicked those aside 
with their heavy boots made of the skin of 
a walrus’s throat, and then Kerick said: 




m THE JUNGLE BOOK 


“ Let go! ” and then the men clubbed the 
seals on the head as fast as they could. 

Ten minutes later little Kotick did not rec¬ 
ognize his friends any more, for their skins 
were ripped off from the nose to the hind flip¬ 
pers — whipped off and thrown down on the 
ground in a pile. 

That was enough for Kotick. He turned 
and galloped (a seal can gallop very swiftly 
for a short time) back to the sea, his little 
new mustache bristling with horror. At Sea- 
Lion’s Neck, where the great sea-lions sit on 
the edge of the surf, he flung himself flipper 
over-head into the cool water, and rocked 
there, gasping miserably. ‘‘ What’s here.? ” 
said a sea-lion, gruffly; for as a rule the sea- 
lions keep themselves to themselves. 

Scoochnie! Ochen scoochnie! (“I’m 
lonesome, very lonesome!”), said Kotick. 
“ They ’re killing all the holluschickie on all 
the beaches! ” 

The sea-lion turned his head inshore. 





THE WHITE SEAL 175 


“ Nonsense,” he said; ‘‘ your friends are mak¬ 
ing as much noise as ever. You must have 
seen old Kerick polishing off a drove. He’s 
done that for thirty years.” 

It’s horrible,” said Kotick, backing water 
as a wave went over him, and steadying him¬ 
self with a screw-stroke of his flippers that 
brought him up all standing within three 
inches of a jagged edge of rock. 

“ Well done for a yearling! ” said the sea- 
lion, who could appreciate good swimming. 
“ I suppose it is rather awful from your way 
of looking at it; but if you seals will come 
here year after year, of course the men get 
to know of it, and unless you can And an 
island where no men ever come, you will al¬ 
ways be driven.” 

“ Is n’t there any such island.? ” began Ko¬ 
tick. 

“ I’ve followed the poltoos [the halibut] 
for twenty years, and I can’t say I’ve found 
it yet. But look here — you seem to have a 



176 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


fondness for talking to your betters; suppose 
you go to Walrus Islet and talk to Sea Vitch. 
He ma}’^ know something. Don’t flounce off 
like that. It’s a six-mile swim, and if I were 
you I should haul out and take a nap first, 
little one.” 

Kotick thought that that was good advice, 
so he swam round to his own beach, hauled 
out, and slept for half an hour, twitching all 
over, as seals will. Then he headed straight 
for Walrus Islet, a little low sheet of rocky 
island almost due northeast from Novastosh- 
nah, all ledges of rock and gulls’ nests, where 
the walrus herded by themselves. 

He landed close to old Sea Vitch — the 
big, ugly, bloated, pimpled, fat-necked, long- 
tusked walrus of the North Pacific, who has 
no manners except when he is asleep — as he 
was then, with his hind flippers half in and 
half out of the surf. 

“ Wake up! ” barked Kotick, for the gulls 
were making a great noise. 




THE WHITE SEAL 177 


“Hah! Ho! Hmph! What’s that?” 
said Sea Vitch, and he struck the next walrus 
a blow with his tusks and waked him up, and 
the next struck the next, and so on till they 
were all awake and staring in every direction 
but the right one. 

“ Hi! It’s me,” said Kotick, bobbing in 
the surf and looking like a little white slug. 

“Well! May I be — skinned!” said Sea 
Vitch, and they all looked at Kotick as you 
can fancy a club full of drowsy old gentlemen 
would look at a little boy. Kotick did not 
care to hear any more about skinning just 
then; he had seen enough of it; so he called 
out: “ Is n’t there any place for seals to go 

where men don’t ever come ? ” 

“ Go and find out,” said Sea Vitch, shutting 
his eyes. “ Run away. We ’re busy here.” 

Kotick made his dolphin-jump in the air 
and shouted as loud as he could: “ Clam- 

eater ! Clam-eater! ” He knew that Sea 
Vitch never caught a fish in his life, but always 




178 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


rooted for clams and seaweeds; though he pre¬ 
tended to be a very terrible person. Naturally 
the Chickies and the Gooverooskies and the 
Epatkas, the Burgomaster Gulls and the Kitti- 
wakes and the Puffins, who are always looking 
for a chance to be rude, took up the cry, and 
— so Limmershin told me — for nearly five 
minutes you could not have heard a gun 
fired on Walrus Islet. All the population 
was yelling and screaming: “ Clam-eater 1 
Stareek [old man] ! ” while Sea Vitch 
rolled from side to side grunting and cough¬ 
ing. 

“ Now will you tell.^^ ” said Kotick, all out 
of breath. 

‘‘ Go and ask Sea Cow,” said Sea Vitch. 
“ If he is living still, he ’ll be able to tell 
you.” 

“ How shall I know Sea Cow when I meet 
him?” said Kotick, sheering off. 

‘‘ He’s the only thing in the sea uglier 
than Sea Vitch,” screamed a burgomaster 




THE WHITE SEAL 179 


gull, wheeling under Sea Vitch’s nose. Ug¬ 
lier, and with worse manners! Stareek! 

Kotick swam back to Novastoshnah, leav¬ 
ing the gulls to scream. There he found that 
no one sympathized with him in his little at¬ 
tempts to discover a quiet place for the seals. 
They told him that men had always driven the 
holluschickie — it was part of the day’s work 
— and that if he did not like to see ugly 
things he should not have gone to the killing- 
grounds. But none of the other seals had 
seen the killing, and that made the difference 
between him and his friends. Besides, Ko¬ 
tick was a white seal. 

“ What you must do,” said old Sea Catch, 
after he had heard his son’s adventures, “ is 
to grow up and be a big seal like your father, 
and have a nursery on the beach, and then 
they will leave you alone. In another five 
years you ought to be able to fight for your¬ 
self.” Even gentle Matkah, his mother, 
said: “You will never be able to stop the 



^180 THE JUNGLE BOOK 

killing. Go and play in the sea, Kotick.” 
And Kotick went off and danced the Fire- 
dance with a very heavy little heart. 

That autumn he left the beach as soon as 
he could, and set off alone because of a notion 
in his bullet-head. He was going to find 
Sea Cow, if there was such a person in the 
sea, and he was going to find a quiet island 
with good firm beaches for seals to live on, 
where men could not get at them. So he ex¬ 
plored and explored by himself from the North 
to the South Pacific, swimming as much as 
three hundred miles in a day and a night. He 
met with more adventures than can be told, 
and narrowly escaped being caught by the 
Basking Shark, and the Spotted Shark, and 
the Hammerhead, and he met all the untrust¬ 
worthy ruffians that loaf up and down the 
high seas, and the heavy polite fish, and the 
scarlet-spotted scallops that are moored in 
one place for hundreds of years, and grow 
very proud of it; but he never met Sea Cow. 




THE WHITE SEAL 181 

and he never found an island that he could 
fancy. 

If the beach was good and hard, with a 
slope behind it for seals to play on, there was 
always the smoke of a whaler on the horizon, 
boiling down blubber, and Kotick knew what 
that meant. Or else he could see that seals 
had once visited the island and been killed off, 
and Kotick knew that where men had come 
once they would come again. 

He picked up with an old stumpy-tailed 
albatross, who told him that Kerguelen Island 
was the very place for peace and quiet, and 
when Kotick went down there he was all but 
smashed to pieces against some wicked 
black cliffs in a heavy sleet-storm with light¬ 
ning and thunder. Yet as he pulled out 
against the gale he could see that even there 
had once been a seal nursery. And it was so 
in all the other islands that he visited. 

Limmershin gave a long list of them, for he 
said that Kotick spent five seasons exploring, 




182 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


with a four-months’ rest each year at Novas- 
toshnah, where the holluschickie used to make 
fun of him and his imaginary islands. He 
went to the Gallapagos, a horrid dry place on 
the Equator, where he was nearly baked to 
death; he went to the Georgia Islands, the 
Orkneys, Emerald Island, Little Nightingale 
Island, Gough’s Island, Bouvet’s Island, the 
Crossets, and even to a little speck of an is¬ 
land south of the Cape of Good Hope. But 
everywhere the People of the Sea told him the 
same things. Seals had come to those islands 
once upon a time, but men had killed them all 
off. Even when he swam thousands of miles 
out of the Pacific, and got to a place called 
Cape Corientes (that was ^hen he was coming 
back from Gough’s Island), he found a few 
hundred mangy seals on a rock, and they 
told him that men came there too. 

That nearly broke his heart, and he headed 
round the Horn back to his own beaches; 
and on his way north he hauled out on an 




THE WHITE SEAL 183 


island full of green trees, where he found an 
old, old seal who was dying, and Kotick 
caught fish for him and told him all his sor¬ 
rows. “ Now,” said Kotick, ‘‘ I am going 
back to Novastoshnah, and if I am driven to 
the killing-pens with the holluschickie I shall 
not care.” 

The old seal said: Try once more. I 

am the last of the Lost Rookery of Masa- 
fuera, and in the days when men killed us by 
the hundred thousand there was a story on 
the beaches that some day a white seal would 
come out of the north and lead the seal people 
to a quiet place. I am old and I shall never 
live to see that day, but others will. Try 
once more.” 

And Kotick curled up his mustache (it was 
a beauty), and said: “ I am the only white 

seal that has ever been born on the beaches, 
and I am the only seal, black or white, who 
ever thought of looking for new islands.” 

That cheered him immensely; and when he 



184 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


came back to Novastoshnah that summer, 
Matkah, his mother, begged him to marry and 
settle down, for he was no longer a hollus- 
chick, but a full-grown sea-catch, with a 
curly white mane on his shoulders, as heavy, 
as big, and as fierce as his father. “ Give 
me another season,” he said. “ Remember, 
Mother, it is always the seventh wave that 
goes farthest up the beach.” 

Curiously enough, there was another seal 
who thought that she would put off marrying 
till the next year, and Kotick danced the Fire- 
dance with her all down Lukannon Beach the 
night before he set off on his last exploration. 

This time he went westward, because he 
had fallen on the trail of a great shoal of 
halibut, and he needed at least one hundred 
pounds of fish a day to keep him in good 
condition. He chased them till he was tired, 
and then he curled himself up and went to 
sleep on the hollows of the ground-swell that 
sets in to Copper Island. He knew the coast 



THE WHITE SEAL 


185 


perfectly well, so about midnight, when he felt 
himself gently bumped on a weed bed, he said: 
“ Hm, tide’s running strong to-night,” and 
turning over under water opened his eyes 
slowly and stretched. Then he jumped like 
a cat, for he saw huge things nosing about 
in the shoal water and browsing on the heavy 
fringes of the weeds. 

“ By the Great Combers of Magellan! ” he 
said, beneath his mustache. “ Who in the 
Deep Sea are these people ? ” 

They were like no walrus, sea-lion, seal, 
bear, whale, shark, fish, squid, or scallop that 
Kotick had ever seen before. They were be¬ 
tween twenty and thirty feet long, and they 
had no hind flippers, but a shovel-like tail that 
looked as if it had been whittled out of wet 
leather. Their heads were the most foolish- 
looking things you ever saw, and they bal¬ 
anced on the ends of their tails in deep 
water when they weren’t grazing, bowing 
solemnly to one another and waving their 




186 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


front flippers as a fat man waves his arm. 

“ Ahem! ” said Kotick. ‘‘ Good sport, 
gentlemen?’’ The big things answered by 
bowing and waving their flippers like the 
Frog-Footman, When they began feeding 
again Kotick saw that their upper lip 
was split into two pieces, that they could 
twitch apart about a foot and bring to¬ 
gether again with a whole bushel of sea¬ 
weed between the splits. They tucked the 
stuff* into their mouths and chumped sol¬ 
emnly. 

“ Messy style of feeding that,” said Kotick. 
They bowed again, and Kotick began to lose 
his temper. “ Very good,” he said. “ If 
you do happen to have an extra joint in your 
front flipper you need n’t show off* so. I see 
you bow gracefully, but I should like to know 
your names.” The split lips moved and 
twitched, and the glassy green eyes stared; 
but they did not speak. 

“ Well! ” said Kotick, “ you ’re the only 



THE WHITE SEAL 187 


people I’ve ever met uglier than Sea Vitch — 
and with worse manners.” 

Then he remembered in a flash what the 
Burgomaster Gull had screamed to him 
when he was a little yearling at Walrus Islet, 
and he tumbled backward in the water, for 
he knew that he had found Sea Cow at last. 

The sea cows went on schlooping and graz¬ 
ing, and chumping in the weed, and Kotick 
asked them questions in every language that 
he had picked up in his travels; and the Sea 
People talk nearly as many languages as 
human beings. But the Sea Cow did not an¬ 
swer, because Sea Cow cannot talk. He has 
only six bones in his neck where he ought to 
have seven, and they say under the sea that 
that prevents him from speaking even to his 
companions; but, as you know, he has an 
extra joint in his fore flipper, and by waving 
it up and down and about he makes what 
answers to a sort of clumsy telegraphic 
code. 




188 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


By daylight Kotick’s mane was standing 
on end and his temper was gone where the 
dead crabs go. Then the Sea Cow began to 
travel northward very slowly, stopping 
to hold absurd bowing councils from time to 
time, and Kotick followed them, saying to 
himself: “ People who are such idiots as 

these are would have been killed long ago if 
they had n’t found out some safe island; and 
what is good enough for the Sea Cow is good 
enough for the Sea Catch. All the same, I 
wish they’d hurry.” 

It was weary work for Kotick. The herd 
never went more than forty or fifty miles a 
day, and stopped to feed at night, and kept 
close to the shore all the time; while Kotick 
swam round them, and over them, and under 
them, but he could not hurry them up one 
half-mile. As they went farther north they 
held a bowing council every few hours, and 
Kotick nearly bit off his mustache with im¬ 
patience till he saw that they were following 



THE WHITE SEAL 189 


up a warm current of water, and then he re¬ 
spected them more. 

One night they sank through the shiny wa¬ 
ter — sank like stones — and, for the first 
time since he had known them, began to swim 
quickly. Kotick followed, and the pace as¬ 
tonished him, for he never dreamed that 
Sea Cow was anything of a swimmer. They 
headed for a cliff by the shore, a cliff that ran 
down into deep water, and plunged into a 
dark hole at the foot of it, twenty fathoms 
under the sea. It was a long, long swim, 
and Kotick badly wanted fresh air before 
he was out of the dark tunnel they led him 
through. 

“ My wig! ” he said, when he rose, gasp¬ 
ing and puffing, into open water at the farther 
end. “ It was a long dive, but it was worth 
it.” 

The sea cows had separated, and were 
browsing lazily along the edges of the finest 
beaches that Kotick had ever seen. There 




190 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


were long stretches of smooth worn rock run¬ 
ning for miles, exactly fitted to make seal 
nurseries, and there were playgrounds of hard 
sand, sloping inland behind them, and there 
were rollers for seals to dance in, and long 
grass to roll in, and sand-dunes to climb up 
and down, and best of all, Kotick knew by the 
feel of the water, which never deceives a true 
Sea Catch, that no men had ever come 
there. 

The first thing that he did was to assure 
himself that the fishing was good, and then 
he swam along the beaches and counted up 
the delightful low sandy islands half hidden 
in the beautiful rolling fog. Away to the 
northward out to sea ran a line of bars and 
shoals and rocks that would never let a ship 
come within six miles of the beach; and be¬ 
tween the islands and the mainland was a 
stretch of deep water that ran up to the 
perpendicular cliffs, and somewhere below the 
cliffs was the mouth of the tunnel. 




.-.V: 


THE WHITE SEAL 191 

“ It’s Novastoshnah over again, but ten 
times better,” said Kotick. “ Sea Cow must 
be wiser than I thought. Men can’t come 
down the cliffs, even if there were any men; 
and the shoals to seaward would knock a ship 
to splinters. If any place in the sea is safe, 
this is it.” 

He began to think of the seal he had left 
behind him, but though he was in a hurry to 
go back to Novastoshnah, he thoroughly ex¬ 
plored the new country, so that he would be 
able to answer all questions. 

Then he dived and made sure of the mouth 
of the tunnel, and raced through to the south¬ 
ward. No one but a sea cow or a seal would 
have dreamed of there being such a place, and 
when he looked back at the cliffs even Kotick 
could hardly believe that he had been under 
them. 

He w^as six days going home, though he 
was not swimming slowly; and when he 
hauled out just above Sea-Lion’s Neck the 





192 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


first person he met was the seal who had 
been waiting for him, and she saw by the 
look in his eyes that he had found his island 
at last. 

But the hoUuschickie and Sea Catch, his 
father, and all the other seals, laughed at him 
when he told them what he had discovered, 
and a young seal about his own age said: 
“ This is all very well, Kotick, but you can’t 
come from no one knows where and order us 
off like this. Remember we’ve been fighting 
for our nurseries, and that’s a thing you 
never did. You preferred prowling about in 
the sea.” 

The other seals laughed at this, and the 
young seal began twisting his head from side 
to side. He had just married that year, and 
was making a great fuss about it. 

‘‘ I’ve no nursery to fight for,” said Ko¬ 
tick. ‘‘ I want only to show you all a place 
where you will be safe. What’s the use of 
fighting? ” 




THE WHITE SEAL 193 


“ Oh, if you ’re trying to back out, of 
course I’ve no more to say,” said the young 
seal, with an ugly chuckle. 

“ Will you come with me if I win? ” said 
Kotick; and a green light came into his eyes, 
for he was very angry at having to fight at 
all. 

“ Very good,” said the young seal, care¬ 
lessly. “ If you win, I ’ll come.” 

He had no time to change his mind, for 
Kotick’s head darted out and his teeth sunk 
in the blubber of the young seal’s neck. 
Then he threw himself back on his haunches 
and hauled his enemy down the beach, shook 
him, and knocked him over. Then Kotick 
roared to the seals: I’ve done my best 

for you these five seasons past. I’ve found 
you the island where you ’ll be safe, but un¬ 
less your heads are dragged off your silly 
necks you won’t believe. I’m going to teach 
you now. Look out for yourselves! ” 

Limmershin told me that never in his life 




194 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


— and Limmershin sees ten thousand big 
seals fighting every year — never in all his 
little life did he see anything like Kotick’s 
charge into the nurseries. He flung himself 
at the biggest sea-catch he could find, caught 
him by the throat, choked him and bumped 
him and banged him till he grunted for mercy, 
and then threw him aside and attacked the 
next. You see, Kotick had never fasted for 
four months as the big seals did every year, 
and his deep-sea swimming-trips kept him in 
perfect condition, and, best of all, he had 
never fought before. His curly white mane 
stood up with rage, and his eyes flamed, and 
his big dog-teeth glistened, and he was splen¬ 
did to look at. 

Old Sea Catch, his father, saw him tearing 
past, hauling the grizzled old seals about as 
though they had been halibut, and upsetting 
the young bachelors in all directions; and 
Sea Catch gave one roar and shouted: “ He 
may be a fool, but he is the best fighter on 


v' .i 




THE WHITE SEAL 195 


the Beaches. Don’t tackle your father, my 
son! He’s with you! ” 

Kotick roared in answer, and old Sea Catch 
waddled in, his mustache on end, blowing like 
a locomotive, while Matkah and the seal that 
was going to marry Kotick cowered down and 
admired their men-folk. It was a gorgeous 
fight, for the two fought as long as there was 
a seal that dared lift up his head, and then 
they paraded grandly up and down the beach 
side by side, bellowing. 

At night, just as the Northern Lights were 
winking and flashing through the fog, Kotick 
climbed a bare rock and looked down on the 
scattered nurseries and the tom and bleeding 
seals. “ Now,” he said, “ I’ve taught you 
your lesson.” 

“ My wig! ” said old Sea Catch, boosting 
himself up stiffly, for he was fearfully mauled. 
“ The Killer Whale himself could not have 
cut them up worse. Son, I’m proud of 
you, and what’s more, I come with you 



196 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


to your island — if there is such a place.” 

“ Hear you, fat pigs of the sea! Who 
comes with me to the Sea Cow’s tunnel.?^ An¬ 
swer, or I shall teach you again,” roared Ko- 
tick. 

There was a murmur like the ripple of the 
tide all up and down the beaches. “We will 
come,” said thousands of tired voices. “We 
will follow Kotick, the White Seal.” 

Then Kotick dropped his head between his 
shoulders and shut his eyes proudly. He was 
not a white seal any more, but red from head 
to tail. All the same he would have scorned 
to look at or touch one of his wounds. 

A week later he and his army (nearly ten 
thousand holluschickie and old seals) went 
away north to the Sea Cow’s tunnel, Kotick 
leading them, and the seals that stayed at 
Novastoshnah called them idiots. But next 
spring when they all met off the fishing-banks 
of the Pacific, Kotick’s seals told such tales 
of the new beaches beyond Sea Cow’s tunnel 




THE WHITE SEAL 197 


that more and more seals left Novastosh- 
nah. 

Of course it was not all done at once, for 
the seals need a long time to turn things over 
in their minds, but year by year more seals 
went away from Novastoshnah, and Lukan- 
non, and the other nurseries, to the quiet, 
sheltered beaches where Kotick sits all the 
summmer through, getting bigger and fatter 
and stronger each year, while the hollus- 
chickie play round him, in that sea where no 


man comes. 



198 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


LUKANNON 

This is the great deep-sea song that all the St. 

Paul seals sing when they are heading back to their 

beaches in the summer. It is a sort of very sad seal 

National Anthem. 

I met my mates in the morning (and oh, but I 
am old!) 

Where roaring on the ledges the summer ground- 
swell rolled; 

I heard them lift the chorus that dropped the 
breakers’ song — 

The beaches of Lukannon — two million voices 
strong! 

The song of pleasant stations beside the salt 
lagoons. 

The song of blowing squadrons that shuffled 
down the dunes, 

The song of midnight dances that churned the 
sea to flame — 

The beaches of Lukannon — before the sealers 
came! 

I met my mates in the morning (I ’ll never meet 
them more I); 





THE WHITE SEAL 199 


They came and went in legions that darkened 
all the shore. 

And through the floam-flecked offing as far as 
voice could reach 

We hailed the landing-parties and we sang them 
up the beach. 


The beaches of Luhannon — the winter-wheat 
so tall — 

The dripping, crinkled lichens, and the sea-fog 
drenching all! 

The platforms of our playground, all shining 
smooth and worn! 

The beaches of Luhannon — the home where 
we were born! 



I meet my mates in the morning, a broken, scat- ^ 

tered band. T 

Men shoot us in the water and club us on the y ^ 

land; ,: : - / 

Men drive us to the Salt House like silly sheep ' ^ " I/ 

and tame, i / 

And still we sing Lukannon--before the seal- ' ' 

ers came. I \ / 

: v ■- iS' / 

Wheel down, wheel down to southward; oh, f t'. ' 

Gooverooska go! ^ 7,4 v/-■.> 



200 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


And tell the Deep-Sea Viceroys the story of 
our Tvoe; 

Ere, empty as the shark*s egg the tempest flings 
ashore, 

The beaches of Lukannon shall know their sons 
no more! 




“ RIKKI-TIKKI-TAVI 



?» 


At the hole where he went in 
Red-Eye called to Wrinkle-Skin. 

Hear what little Red-Eye saith: 

“Nag, come up and dance with death!” 

Eye to eye and head to head, 

{Keep the measure, Nag.) 

This shall end when one is dead; 

{At thy pleasure, Nag.) 

Turn for turn and twist for twist — 
{Run and hide thee, Nag.) 

Hah! The hooded Death has missed! 
{Woe betide thee, Nag!) 








“ RIKKI-TIKKI-TAVI ” 

T his is the story of the great war that 
Rikki-tikki-tavi fought single-handed, 
through the bath-rooms of the big bungalow 
in Segowlee cantonment. Darzee, the tailor- 
bird, helped him, and Chuchundra, the musk¬ 
rat, who never comes out into the middle 
of the floor, but always creeps round by the 
wall, gave him advice; but Rikki-tikki did 
the real fighting. 

He was a mongoose, rather like a little cat 
in his fur and his tail, but quite like a weasel 
in his head and his habits. His eyes and the 
end of his restless nose were pink; he could 
scratch himself anywhere he pleased, with any 
leg, front or back, that he chose to use; he 
could fluff up his tail till it looked like a 
bottle-brush, and his war-cry as he scuttled 




204 


THE JUNGLE BOOK 


through the long grass, was: “ Rikk-tikk- 

tikki-tikki-tchk! ” 

One day, a high summer flood washed him 
out of the burrow where he lived with his 
father and mother, and carried him, kicking 
and clucking, down a roadside ditch. He 
found a little wisp of grass floating there, 
and clung to it till he lost his senses. When 
he revived, he was lying in the hot sun on 
the middle of a garden path, very draggled 
indeed, and a small boy was saying: “ Here’s 
a dead mongoose. Let’s have a funeral.” 

“No,” said his mother; “let’s take him 
in and dry him. Perhaps he isn’t really 
dead.” 

They took him into the house, and a big 
man picked him up between his finger and 
thumb and said he was not dead but half 
choked; so they wrapped him in cotton-wool, 
and warmed him, and he opened his eyes and 
sneezed. 

“ Now,” said the big man (he was an Eng- 



“RIKKI-TIKKI-TAVI” 


^05 




lishman who had just moved into the bunga¬ 
low) ; “ don’t frighten him, and we ’ll see 
what he ’ll do.” 

It is the hardest thing in the world to 
frighten a mongoose, because he is eaten up 
from nose to tail with curiosity. The motto 
of all the mongoose family is, “ Run and find 
out ” ; and Rikki-tikki was a true mongoose. 
He looked at the cotton-wool, decided that it 
was not good to eat, ran all round the table, 
sat up and put his fur in order, scratched him¬ 
self, and jumped on the small boy’s shoulder. 

“ Don’t be frightened, Teddy,” said his 
father. ‘‘ That’s his way of making 
friends.” 

“ Ouch! He’s tickling under my chin,” 
said Teddy. 

Rikki-tikki looked down between the boy’s 
collar and neck, snuffed at his ear, and 
climbed down to the floor, where he sat rub¬ 
bing his nose. 

“ Good gracious,” said Teddy’s mother. 



206 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


“ and that’s a wild creature! I suppose he’s 
so tame because we’ve been kind to him.” 

“ All mongooses are like that,” said her 
husband. “ If Teddy does n’t pick him up 
by the tail, or try to put him in a cage, he ’ll 
run in and out of the house all day long. 
Let’s give him something to eat.” 

They gave him a little piece of raw meat. 
Rikki-tikki liked it immensely, and when it 
was finished he went out into the veranda 
and sat in the sunshine and fluffed up his fur 
to make it dry to the roots. Then he felt 
better. 

“ There are more things to find out about 
in this house,” he said to himself, “ than all 
my family could find out in all their lives. 
I shall certainly stay and find out.” 

He spent all that day roaming over the 
house. He nearly drowned himself in the 
bath-tubs, put his nose into the ink on a 
writing-table, and burned it on the end of 
the big man’s cigar, for he climbed up in the 




RIKKI'TIKKI'TAVI AND NAG 



















“RIKKI-TIKKI-TAVI” 


207 

big man’s lap to see how writing was done. 
At nightfall he ran into Teddy’s nursery to 
watch how kerosene lamps were lighted, and 
when Teddy went to bed Rikki-tikki climbed 
up too; but he was a restless companion, be¬ 
cause he had to get up and attend to every 
noise all through the night, and find out what 
made it. Teddy’s mother and father came 
in, the last thing, to look at their boy, and 
Rikki-tikki was awake on the pillotv. “ I 
don’t like that,” said Teddy’s mothe^; “ he 
may bite the child.” “ He ’ll do no such 
thing,” said the father. “ Teddy’s safer 
with that little beast than if he had a blood¬ 
hound to watch him. If a snake came into 
the nursery now —” 

But Teddy’s mother would n’t think of 
anything so awful. 

Early in the morning Rikki-tikki came to 
early breakfast in the veranda riding on Ted¬ 
dy’s shoulder, and they gave him banana and 
some boiled egg; and he sat on all their laps 




one after the other, because every well- 
brought-up mongoose always hopes to be a 
house-mongoose some day and have rooms to 
run about in, and Rikki-tikki’s mother (she 
used to live in the General’s house at Se- 
gowlee) had carefully told Rikki what to do 
if ever he came across white men. 

Then Rikki-tikki went out into the garden 
to see what was to be seen. It was a large 
garden, only half cultivated, with bushes as 
big as summer-houses of Marshal Niel roses, 
lime and orange trees, clumps of bamboos, 
and thickets of high grass. .Rikki-tikki 
licked his lips. “ This is a splendid hunting- 
ground,” he said, and his tail grew bottle- 
brushy at the thought of it, and he scuttled 
up and down the garden, snuffing here and 
there till he heard very sorrowful voices in a 
thom-bush. 

It was Darzee, the tailor-bird, and his wife. 
They had made a beautiful nest by pulling 
two big leaves together and stitching them up 




“RIKKI-TIKKI-TAVI” 


211 


gan to fluff up again, “ marks or no marks,, 
do you think it is right for you to eat fledg¬ 
lings out of a nest? ” 

Nag was thinking to himself, and watching 
the least little movement in the grass behind 
Rikki-tikki. He knew that mongooses in the 
garden meant death sooner or later for him 
and his family; but he wanted to get Rikki- 
tikki off his guard. So he dropped his head 
a little, and put it on one side. 

“ Let us talk,” he said. ‘‘ You eat eggs. 
Why should not I eat birds ? ” 

“ Behind you ! Look behind you! ” sang 
Darzee. 

Rikki-tikki knew better than to waste time 
in staring. He jumped up in the air as high 
as he could go, and just under him whizzed 
by the head of Nagaina, Nag’s wicked wife. 
She had crept up behind him as he was talk¬ 
ing, to make an end of him; and he heard her 
savage hiss as the stroke missed. He came 
down almost across her back, and if he had 



212 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


been an old mongoose he would have known 
that then was the time to break her back with 
one bite; but he was afraid of the terrible 
lashing return-stroke of the cobra. He bit, 
indeed, but did not bite long enough, and he 
jumped clear of the whisking tail, leaving 
Nagaina torn and angry. 

“Wicked, wicked Darzee!” said Nag, 
lashing up as high as he could reach toward 
the nest in the thom-bush; but Darzee had 
built it out of reach of snakes, and it only 
swayed to and fro. 

Rikki-tikki felt his eyes growing red and 
hot (when a mongoose’s eyes grow red, he is 
angry), and he sat back on his tail and hind 
legs like a little kangaroo, and looked all 
around him, and chattered with rage. But 
Nag and Nagaina had disappeared into the 
grass. When a snake misses its stroke, it 
never says anything or gives any sign of 
what it means to do next. Rikki-tikki did 
not care to follow them, for he did not feel 




“RIKKI-TIKKI-TAVI’’ 


213 


sure that he could manage two snakes at 
once. So he trotted off to the gravel path 
near the house, and sat down to think. It 
was a serious matter for him. 

If you read the old books of natural his¬ 
tory, you will find they say that when the 
mongoose fights the snake and happens to 
get bitten, he runs off and eats some herb 
that cures him. That is not true. The vic¬ 
tory is only a matter of quickness of eye and 
quickness of foot,— snake’s blow against 
mongoose’s jump,— and as no eye can fol¬ 
low the motion of a snake’s head when it 
strikes, that makes things much more wonder¬ 
ful than any magic herb. Rikki-tikki knew 
he was a young mongoose, and it made him 
all the more pleased to think that he had 
managed to escape a blow from behind. It 
gave him confidence in himself, and when 
Teddy came running down the path, Rikki- 
tikki was ready to be petted. 

But just as Teddy was stooping, something 




S14 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


flinched a little in the dust, and a tiny voice 
said: “ Be careful. I am death! ” It 

was Karait, the dusty brown snakeling that 
lies for choice on the dusty earth; and his 
bite is as dangerous as the cobra’s. But he 
is so small that nobody thinks of him, and 
so he does the more harm to people. 

Rikki-tikki’s eyes grew red again, and he 
danced up to Karait with the peculiar rock¬ 
ing, swaying motion that he had inherited 
from his family. It looks very funny, but 
it is so perfectly balanced a gait that you 
can fly off from it at any angle you please; 
and in dealing with snakes this is an advan¬ 
tage. If Rikki-tikki had only known, he was 
doing a much more dangerous thing than 
fighting Nag, for Karait is so small, and can 
turn so quickly, that unless Rikki bit him 
close to the back of the head, he would get 
the return-stroke in his eye or lip. But 
Rikki did not know: his eyes were all 
red, and he rocked back and forth, looking 





“RIKKI-TIKKI-TAVI” 


215 


for a good place to hold. Karait struck out. 
Rikki jumped sideways and tried to run in, 
but the wicked little dusty gray head lashed 
within a fraction of his shoulder, and he had 
to jump over the body, and the head fol¬ 
lowed his heels close. 

Teddy shouted to the house: Oh, look 

here! Our mongoose is killing a snake ” ; 
and Rikki-tikki heard a scream from Teddy’s 
mother. His father ran out with a stick, but 
by the time he came up, Karait had lunged 
out once too far, and Rikki-tikki had sprung, 
jumped on the snake’s back, dropped his head 
far between his fore legs, bitten as high up 
the back as he could get hold, and rolled 
away. That bite paralyzed Karait, and 
Rikki-tikki was just going to eat him up 
from the tail, after the custom of his family 
at dinner, when he remembered that a full 
meal makes a slow mongoose, and if he wanted 
all his strength and quickness ready, he must 
keep himself thin. 




^16 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


He went away for a dust-bath under the 
castor-oil bushes, while Teddy’s father beat 
the dead Karait. “ What is the use of 
that?” thought Rikki-tikki. “I have set¬ 
tled it all” ; and then Teddy’s mother 
picked him up from the dust and hugged him, 
crying that he had saved Teddy from death, 
and Teddy’s father said that he was a provi¬ 
dence, and Teddy looked on with big scared 
eyes. Rikki-Tikki was rather amused at all 
the fuss, which, of course, he did not under¬ 
stand. Teddy’s mother might just as well 
have petted Teddy for playing in the dust. 
Rikki was thoroughly enjoying himself. 

That night, at dinner, walking to and fro 
among the wine-glasses on the table, he could 
have stuffed himself three times over with 
nice things; but he remembered Nag and 
Nagaina, and though it was very pleasant to 
be patted and petted by Teddy’s mother, and 
to sit on Teddy’s shoulder, his eyes would 
get red from time to time, and he would go 




I 


‘‘RIKKI-TIKKI-TAVI” 217 

off into his long war-cry of “ Rikk-tikk-tikki- 
tikki-tchk! ” 

Teddy carried him off to bed, and insisted 
on Rikki-tikki sleeping under his chin. 
Rikki-tikki was too well bred to bite or 
scratch, but as soon as Teddy was asleep he 
went off for his nightly walk round the house, 
and in the dark he ran up against Chuchun- 
dra, the muskrat, creeping round by the wall. 
Chuchundra is a broken-hearted little beast. 
He whimpers and creeps all the night, trying 
to make up his mind to run into the middle 
of the room, but he never gets there. 

“ Don’t kill me,” said Chuchundra, almost 
weeping. “ Rikki-tikki, don’t kill me.” 

Do you think a snake-killer kills musk¬ 
rats ^ ” said Rikki-tikki scornfully. 

“ Those who kill snakes get killed by 
snakes,” said Chuchundra, more sorrowfully 
than ever. “ And how am I to be sure that 
Nag won’t mistake me for you some dark 
night? ” 




218 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


“ There’s not the least danger,” said Rik- 
ki-tikki; “ but Nag is in the garden, and I 
know you don’t go there.” 

‘‘ My cousin Chua, the rat, told me —” 
said Chuchundra, and then he stopped. 

“ Told you what? ” 

‘‘H’sh! Nag is everywhere, Rikki-tikki. 
You should have talked to Chua in the gar¬ 
den.” 

“ I did n’t — so you must tell me. Quick, 
Chuchundra, or I ’ll bite you! ” 

Chuchundra sat down and cried till the 
tears rolled off his whiskers. “ I am a 
very poor man,” he sobbed. “ I never had 
spirit enough to run out into the middle 
of the room. H’sh! I mus n’t tell you 
anything. Can’t you hear, Rikki-tik¬ 
ki?” 

Rikki-tikki listened. The house was as 
still as still, but he thought he could just 
catch the faintest scratch-scratch in the 
world,— a noise as faint as that of a wasp 




‘‘RIKKI-TIKKI-TAVI” 


219 


walking on a window-pane,— the dry scratch 
of a snake’s scales on brickwork. 

“ That’s Nag or Nagaina,” he said to 
himself; “ and he is crawling into the bath¬ 
room sluice. You’re right, Chuchundra; I 
should have talked to Chua.” 

He stole off to Teddy’s bath-room, but 
there was nothing there, and then to Teddy’s 
mother’s bath-room. At the bottom of the 
smooth plaster wall there was a brick pulled 
out to make a sluice for the bath-water, and 
as Rikki-tikki stole in by the masonry curb 
where the bath is put, he heard Nag and 
Nagaina whispering together outside in the 
moonlight. 

“ When the house is emptied of people,” 
said Nagaina to her husband, “ he will have 
to go away, and then the garden will be our 
own again. Go in quietly, and remember 
that the big man who killed Karait is the first 
one to bite. Then come out and tell me, and 
we will hunt for Rikki-tikki together.” 




220 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


‘‘ But are you sure that there is anything 
to be gained by killing the people ? ” said 
Nag. 

“ Everything. When there were no peo¬ 
ple in the bungalow, did we have any mon¬ 
goose in the garden ? So long as the 
bungalow is empty, we are king and queen 
of the garden; and remember that as soon 
as our eggs in the melon-bed hatch (as they 
may to-morrow), our children will need room 
and quiet.” 

“ I had not thought of that,” said Nag. 
“ I will go, but there is no need that we 
should hunt for Rikki-tikki afterward! I 
will kill the big man and his wife, and the 
child if I can, and come away quietly. Then 
the bungalow will be empty, and Rikki-tikki 
will go.” 

Rikki-tikki tingled all over with rage and 
hatred at this, and then Nag’s head came 
through the sluice, and his five feet of cold 
body followed it. Angry as he was, Rikki- 




‘‘RIKKI-TIKKI-TAVI” 221 

tikki was very frightened as he saw the size 
of the big cobra. Nag coiled himself up, 
raised his head, and looked into the bath¬ 
room in the dark, and Rikki could see his 
eyes glitter. 

“ Now, if I kill him here, Nagaina will 
know; and if I fight him on the open floor, 
the odds are in his favor. What am I to 
do ? ” said Rikki-tikki-tavi. 

Nag waved to and fro, and then Rikki- 
tikki heard him drinking from the biggest 
water-jar that was used to fill the bath. 
“ That is good,” said the snake. “Now, 
when Karait was killed, the big man had a 
stick. He may have that stick still, but 
when he comes in to bathe in the morning 
he will not have a stick. I shall wait here 
till he comes. Nagaina — do you hear 
me ? — I shall wait here in the cool till day¬ 
time.” 

There was no answer from outside, so Rik- 
ki-tikki knew Nagaina had gone away. Nag 





222 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


coiled himself down, coil by coil, round the 
bulge at the bottom of the water-jar, and 
Rikki-tikki stayed still as death. After an 
hour he began to move, muscle by muscle, 
toward the jar. Nag was asleep, and Rikki- 
tikki looked at his big back, wondering which 
would be the best place for a good hold. 
“ If I don’t break his back at the first jump,” 
said Rikki, “ he can still fight; and if he 
fights — O Rikki! ” He looked at the thick¬ 
ness of the neck below the hood, but that was 
too much for him; and a bite near the tail 
would only make Nag savage. 

“ It must be the head,” he said at last: 
“ the head above the hood; and, when I am 
once there, I must not let go.” 

Then he jumped. The head was lying a 
little clear of the water-jar, under the curve 
of it; and, as his teeth met, Rikki braced his 
back against the bulge of the red earthen¬ 
ware to hold down the head. This gave him 
just one second’s purchase, and he made the 



'‘RIKKI-TIKKI-TAVI” 


223 


most of it. Then he was battered to and fro 
as a rat is shaken by a dog — to and fro on 
the floor, up and down, and round in great 
circles; but his eyes were red, and he held 
on as the body cartwhipped over the floor, 
upsetting the tin dipper and the soap-dish 
and the flesh-brush, and banged against the 
tin side of the bath. As he held he closed 
his jaws tighter and tighter, for he made 
sure he would be banged to death, and, for 
the honor of his family, he preferred to be 
found with his teeth locked. He was dizzy, 
aching, and felt shaken to pieces when some¬ 
thing went off like a thunderclap just behind 
him; a hot wind knocked him senseless and 
red fire singed his fur. The big man had 
been wakened by the noise, and had fired both 
barrels of a shot-gun into Nag just behind 
the hood. 

Rikki-tikki held on with his eyes shut, for 
now he was quite sure he was dead; but the 
head did not move, and the big man picked 



224 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


him up and said: “ It’s the mongoose 

again, Alice; the little chap has saved our 
lives now.” Then Teddy’s mother came in 
with a very white face, and saw what was 
left of Nag, and Rikki-tikki dragged himself 
to Teddy’s bedroom and spent half the rest 
of the night shaking himself tenderly to find 
out whether he really was broken into forty 
pieces, as he fancied. 

When morning came he was very stiff, but 
well pleased with his doings. ‘‘Now I have 
Nagaina to settle with, and she will be worse 
than five Nags, and there’s no knowing when 
the eggs she spoke of will hatch. Goodness! 
I must go and see Darzee,” he said. 

Without waiting for breakfast, Rikki-tikki 
ran to the thorn-bush where Darzee was sing¬ 
ing a song of triumph at the top of his voice. 
The news of Nag’s death was all over the 
garden, for the sweeper had thrown the body 
on the rubbish-heap. 

“Oh, you stupid tuft of feathers!” said 




“RIKKI-TIKKI-TAVI” 


2^5 

Rikki-tikki, angrily. “ Is this the time to 
sing? ” 

“ Nag is dead — is dead — is dead! ” sang 
Darzee.‘ “ The valiant Rikki-tikki caught 
him by the head and held fast. The big man 
brought the bang-stick and Nag fell in two 
pieces! He will never eat my babies 
again.” 

“ All that’s true enough; but where’s 
Nagaina?” said Rikki-tikki, looking care¬ 
fully round him. 

“ Nagaina came to the bath-room sluice and 
called for Nag,” Darzee went on; ‘‘ and Nag 
came out on the end of a stick — the sweeper 
picked him up on the end of a stick and 
threw him upon the rubbish-heap. Let us 
sing about the great, the red-eyed Rikki- 
tikki ! ” and Darzee filled his throat and sang. 

“ If I could get up to your nest, I’d roll 
all your babies out! ” said Rikki-tikki. 
“ You don’t know when to do the right thing 
at the right time. You ’re safe enough in 




m THE JUNGLE BOOK 


your nest there, but it’s war for me down 
here. Stop singing a minute, Darzee.” 

“ For the great, the beautiful Rikki-tikki’s 
sake I will stop,” said Darzee. “ What is it, 
O Killer of the terrible Nagl” 

“Where is Nagaina, for the third time? ” 
“ On the rubbish-heap by the stablea, 
mourning for Nag. Great is Rikki-tikki 
with the white teeth.” 

“ Bother my white teeth! Have you ever 
heard where she keeps her eggs ? ” 

“ In the melon-bed, on the end nearest the 
wall, where the sun strikes nearly all day. 
She had them there weeks ago.” 

“ And you never thought it worth while to 
tell me? The end nearest the wall, you 
said ? ” 

“ Rikki-tikki, you are not going to eat her 
eggs? ” 

“ Not eat exactly; no. Darzee, if you have 
a grain of sense you will fly off to the stables 
and pretend that your wing is broken, and 



“RIKKI-TIKKI-TAVI” 


let Nagaina chase you away to this bush? I 
must get to the melon-bed, and if I went there 
now she’d see me.” 

Darzee was a feather-brained little fellow 
who could never hold more than one idea at a 
time in his head; and just because he knew 
that Nagaina’s children were born in eggs 
like his own, he did n’t think at first that it 
was fair to kill them. But his wife was a 
sensible bird, and she knew that cobra’s eggs 
meant young cobras later on; so she flew off 
from the nest, and left Darzee to keep the 
babies warm, and continue his song about the 
death of Nag. Darzee was very like a man 
in some ways. 

She fluttered in front of Nagaina by the 
rubbish-heap, and cried out, “ Oh, my wing 
is broken! The boy in the house threw a 
stone at me and broke it.” Then she flut¬ 
tered more desperately than ever. 

Nagaina lifted up her head and hissed, 
“ You warned Rikki-tikki when I would have 




228 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


killed him. Indeed and truly, you’ve chosen 
a bad place to be lame in,” And she moved 
toward Darzee’s wife, slipping along over the 
dust. 

“ The boy broke it with a stone! ” shrieked 
Darzee’s wife. 

“Well! It may be some consolation to 
you when you ’re dead to know that I shall 
settle accounts with the boy. My husband 
lies on the rubbish-heap this morning, but be¬ 
fore night the boy in the house will lie very 
still. What is the use of running away? I 
am sure to catch you. Little fool, look at 
me I ” 

Darzee’s wife knew better than to do that, 
for a bird who looks at a snake’s eyes gets 
so frightened that she cannot move. Dar¬ 
zee’s wife fluttered on, piping sorrowfully, 
and never leaving the ground, and Nagaina 
quickened her pace. 

Rikki-tikki heard them going up the path 
froni the stables, and he raced for the end 



‘‘RIKKI-TIKKI-TAVI” 229 


of the melon-patch near the wall. There, in 
the warm litter about the melons, very cun¬ 
ningly hidden, he found twenty-five eggs, 
about the size of a bantam’s eggs, but with 
whitish skin instead of shell. 

“ I was not a day too soon,” he said; for 
he could see the baby cobras curled up inside 
the skin, and he knew that the minute they 
were hatched they could each kill a man or 
a mongoose. He bit off the tops of the eggs 
as fast as he could, taking care to crush the 
young cobras, and turned over the litter from 
time to time to see whether he had missed 
any. At last there were only three eggs left, 
and Rikki-tikki began to chuckle to himself, 
when he heard Darzee’s wife screaming: 

“ Rikki-tikki, I led Nagaina toward the 
house, and she has gone into the veranda, and 
— oh, come quickly — she means killing! ” 

Rikki-tikki smashed two eggs, and tumbled 
backward down the melon-bed with the third 
egg in his mouth, and scuttled to the veranda 




230 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


as hard as he could put foot to the ground. 
Teddy and his mother and father were there 
at early breakfast; but Rikki-tikki saw that 
they were not eating anything. They sat 
stone-still, and their faces were white. Nag- 
aina was coiled up on the matting by Teddy’s 
chair within easy striking distance of Teddy’s 
bare leg, and she was swaying to and fro 
singing a song of triumph. 

‘‘ Son of the big man that killed Nag,” 
she hissed, “ stay still. I am not ready yet. 
Wait a little. Keep very still, all you three. 
If you move I strike, and if you do not move 
I strike. Oh, foolish people, who killed my 
Nag!” 

Teddy’s eyes were fixed on his father, and 
all his father could do was to whisper, ‘‘ Sit 
still, Teddy. You must n’t move. Teddy, 
keep still.” 

Then Rikki-tikki came up and cried: 
“Turn round, Nagaina; turn and fight!” 

“ All in good time,” said she, without mov- 





‘‘RIKKI-TIKKI-TAVI” 


231 


ing her eyes. “ I will settle my account with 
you presently. Look at your friends, Rikki- 
tikki. They are still and white; they are 
afraid. They dare not move, and if you 
come a step nearer I strike.” 

“ Look at your eggs,” said Rikki-tikki, 
“ in the melon-bed near the wall. Go and 
look, Nagaina.” 

The big snake turned half round, and saw 
the egg on the veranda. “ Ah-h! Give it to 
me,” she said. 

Rikki-tikki put his paws one on each side 
of the egg, and his eyes were blood-red. 
“ What price for a snake’s egg? For a 
young cobra? For a young king-cobra? 
For the last — the very last of the brood? 
The ants are eating all the others down by 
the melon-bed.” 

Nagaina spun clear round, forgetting 
everything for the sake of the one egg; and 
Rikki-tikki saw Teddy’s father shoot out a 
big hand, catch Teddy by the shoulder, 



THE JUNGLE BOOK 


and drag him across the little table with the 
teacups, safe and out of reach of Na- 
gaina. 

“ Tricked! Tricked! Tricked! Rikk- 
tck-tck! ” chuckled Rikki-tikki. “ The boy 
is safe, and it was I — I — I that caught 
Nag by the hood last night in the bath-room.” 
Then he began to jump up and down, all four 
feet together, his head close to the floor. 
“ He threw me to and fro, but he could not 
shake me off. He was dead before the big 
man blew him in two. I did it. Rikki-tikki- 
tck~tck! Come then, Nagaina. Come and 
fight with me. You shall not be a widow 
long.” 

Nagaina saw that she had lost her chance 
of killing Teddy, and the egg lay between 
Rikki-tikki’s paws. “ Give me the egg, 
Rikki-tikki. Give me the last of my eggs, 
and I will go away and never come back,” 
she said, lowering her hood. 

“ Yes, you will go away, and you will 




‘‘RIKKI-TIKKI-TAVI” 


233 


never come back; for you will go to the rub¬ 
bish-heap with Nag. Fight, widow! The 
big man has gone for his gun I Fight I ” 
Rikki-tikki was bounding all round Nag- 
aina, keeping just out of reach of her stroke, 
his little eyes like hot coals. Nagaina gath¬ 
ered herself together, and flung out at him. 
Rikki-tikki jumped up and backward. 
Again and again and again she struck, and 
each time her head came with a whack on the 
matting of the veranda and she gathered her¬ 
self together like a watch-spring. Then 
Rikki-tikki danced in a circle to get behind 
her, and Nagaina spun round to keep her 
head to his head, so that the rustle of her 
tail on the matting sounded like dry leaves 
blown along by the wind. 

He had forgotten the egg. It still lay on 
the veranda, and Nagaina came nearer and 
nearer to it, till at last, while Rikki-tikki was 
drawing breath, she caught it in her mouth, 
turned to the veranda steps, and flew hke an 



234 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


arrow down the path, with Rikki-tikki be¬ 
hind her. When the cobra runs for her life, 
she goes like a whiplash flicked across a 
horse’s neck. 

Rikki-tikki knew that he must catch her, 
or all the trouble would begin again. She 
headed straight for the long grass by the 
thorn-bush, and as he was running Rikki- 
tikki heard Darzee still singing his foolish 
little song of triumph. But Darzee’s wife 
was wiser. She flew off her nest as Nagaina 
came along, and flapped her wings about 
Nagaina’s head. If Darzee had helped they 
might have turned her; but Nagaina only 
lowered her hood and went on. Still, the in¬ 
stant’s delay brought Rikki-tikki up to her, 
and as she plunged into the rat-hole where 
she and Nag used to live, his little white teeth 
were clenched on her tail, and he went 
down with her — and very few mongooses, 
however wise and old they may be, care 
to follow a cobra into its hole. It was dark 




‘‘RIKKI-TIKKI-TAVI” 


235 


in the hole; and Rikki-tikki never knew 
when it might open out and give Nagaina 
room to turn and strike at him. He held 
on savagely, and struck out his feet to act 
as brakes on the dark slope of the hot, moist 
earth. 

Then the grass by the mouth of the hole 
stopped waving, and Darzee said: “ It is 

all over with Rikki-tikki! We must sing his 
death-song. Valiant Rikki-tikki is dead! 
For Nagaina will surely kill him under¬ 
ground.” 

So he sang a very mournful song that he 
made up all on the spur of the minute, and 
just as he got to the most touching part the 
grass quivered again, and Rikki-tikki, cov¬ 
ered with dirt, dragged himself out of the 
hole leg by leg, licking his whiskers. Darzee 
stopped with a little shout. Rikki-tikki 
shook some of the dust out of his fur and 
sneezed. ‘‘ It is all over,” he said. “ The 
widow will never come out again.” And the 




236 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


red ants that live between the grass stems 
heard him, and began to troop down one 
after another to see if he had spoken the 
truth. 

Rikki-tikki curled himself up in the grass 
and slept where he was — slept and slept till 
it was late in the afternoon, for he had done 
a hard day’s work. 

“ Now,” he said, when he awoke, ‘‘ I will 
go back to the house. Tell the Copper¬ 
smith, Darzee, and he will tell the garden that 
Nagaina is dead.” 

The Coppersmith is a bird who makes a 
noise exactly like the beating of a little ham¬ 
mer on a copper pot; and the reason he is 
always making it is because he is the town- 
crier to every Indian garden, and tells all the 
news to everybody who cares to listen. As 
Rikki-tikki went up the path, he heard his 
“ attention ” notes like a tiny dinner-gong; 
and then the steady “ Ding-dong-tock! Nag 
is dead — dong! Nagaina is dead! Ding- 






dong-toch! ” That set all the birds in the 
garden singing, and the frogs croaking; for 
Nag and Nagaina used to eat frogs as well 
as little birds. 

When Rikki got to the house, Teddy and 
Teddy’s mother (she looked very white still, 
for she had been fainting) and Teddy’s 
father came out and almost cried over him; 
and that night he ate all that was given him 
till he could eat no more, and went to bed on 
Teddy’s shoulder, where Teddy’s mother 
saw him when she came to look late at 
night. 

“ He saved our lives and Teddy’s life,” 
she said to her husband. “ Just think, he 
saved all our lives.” 

Rikki-tikki woke up with a jump, for all 
the mongooses are light sleepers. 

“ Oh, it’s you,” said he. “ What are you 
bothering for.^ All the cobras are dead; and 
if they were n’t, I’m here.” 

Rikki-tikki had a right to be proud of him- 




':h‘ 












^38 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


self; but he did not grow too proud, and he 
kept that garden as a mongoose should keep 
it, with tooth and jump and spring and bite, 
till never a cobra dared show its head inside 
the walls. 



239 





“RIKKI-TIKKI-TAVl” 


DARZEE’S CHAUNT 

(sung in honor of rikki-tikki-tavi) 

Singer and tailor am I — 

Doubled the joys that I know — 

Proud of my lilt through the sky. 

Proud of the house that I sew — 

Over and under, so weave I my music — so 
weave I the house that I sew. 

Sing to your fledglings again. 

Mother, oh lift up your head! 

Evil that plagued us is slain. 

Death in the garden lies dead. 

Terror that hid in the roses is impotent— flung 
on the dung-hill and dead! 

Who hath delivered us, who.^ 

Tell me his nest and his name. 

Rikki, the valiant, the true, 

Tikki, with eyeballs of flame. 
Rik-tikki-tikki, the ivory-fanged, the hunter 
with eye-balls of flame. 

Give him the Thanks of the Birds, 

Bowing with tail-feathers spread! 





240 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


Praise him with nightingale words — 

Nay, I will praise him instead. 

Hear! I will sing you the praise of the bottle¬ 
tailed Rikki, with eyeballs of red! 

{Here Rikici-tikki interrupted^ and the rest of 
the song is lost.) 




TOOMAI OF THE ELEPHANTS 


I will remember what I was, I am sick of rope and 
chain — 

I will remember my old strength and all my forest 
affairs. 

I will not sell my back to man for a bundle of sugar¬ 
cane, 

I will go out to my own kind, and the wood-folk in 
their lairs. 

I will go out until the day, until the morning break. 

Out to the winds’ untainted kiss, the waters’ clean 
caress: 

I will forget my ankle-ring and snap my picket-stake. 

I will revisit my lost loves, and playmates master¬ 
less! 










TOOMAI OF THE ELEPHANTS 


K ALA nag, which means Black Snake, 
had served the Indian Government in 
every way that an elephant could serve it for 
forty-seven years, and as he was fully twenty 
years old when he was caught, that makes 
him nearly seventy — a ripe age for an ele¬ 
phant. He remembered pushing, with a big 
leather pad on his forehead, at a gun stuck 
in deep mud, and that was before the Afghan 
war of 1842, and he had not then come to 
his full strength. His mother, Radha Pyari, 
— Radha the darling,— who had been caught 
in the same drive with Kala Nag, told him, 
before his little milk tusks had dropped out, 
that elephants who were afraid always got 
243 






2U THE JUNGLE BOOK 


hurt: and Kala Nag knew that that advice 
was good, for the first time that he saw a 
shell burst he backed, screaming, into a stand 
of piled rifles, and the bayonets pricked him 
in all his softest places. So, before he was 
twenty-five, he gave up being afraid, and so 
he was the best-loved and the best-looked- 
after elephant in the service of the Govern¬ 
ment of India. He had carried tents, twelve 
hundred pounds’ weight of tents, on the 
march in Upper India: he had been hoisted 
into a ship at the end of a steam-crane and 
taken for days across the water, and made to 
carry a mortar on his back in a strange and 
rocky country very far from India, and had 
seen the Emperor Theodore lying dead in 
Magdala, and had come back again in the 
steamer entitled, so the soldiers said, to the 
Abyssinian war medal. He had seen his 
fellow-elephants die of cold and epilepsy and 
starvation and sunstroke up at a place called 
Ali Musjid, ten years later; and afterward 





TOOMAI OF THE ELEPHANTS 245 


he had been sent down thousands of miles 
south to haul and pile big baulks of teak in 
the timber-yards at Moulmein. There he had 
half killed an insubordinate young elephant 
who was shirking his fair share of the work. 

After that he was taken olf timber-hauling, 
and employed, with a few score other ele¬ 
phants who were trained to the business, in 
helping to catch wild elephants among the 
Garo hills. Elephants are very strictly pre¬ 
served by the Indian Government. There is 
one whole department which does nothing 
else but hunt them, and catch them, and 
break them in, and send them up and down 
the country as they are needed for work. 

Kala Nag stood ten fair feet at the shoul¬ 
ders, and his tusks had been cut off short at 
five feet, and bound round the ends, to pre¬ 
vent them splitting, with bands of copper; 
but he could do more with those stumps than 
any untrained elephant could do with the real 
sharpened ones. 



M6 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


When, after weeks and weeks of cautious 
driving of scattered elephants across the hills, 
the forty or fifty wild monsters were driven 
into the last stockade, and the big drop-gate, 
made of tree-trunks lashed together, jarred 
down behind them, Kala Nag, at the word of 
command, would go into that flaring, trum¬ 
peting pandemonium (generally at night, 
when the flicker of the torches made it diffi¬ 
cult to judge distances), and, picking out the 
biggest and wildest tusker of the mob, would 
hammer him and hustle him into quiet while 
the men on the backs of the other elephants 
roped and tied the smaller ones. 

There was nothing in the way of fighting 
that Kala Nag, the old wise Black Snake, did 
not know, for he had stood up more than 
once in his time to the charge of the wounded 
tiger, and, curling up his soft trunk to be out 
of harm’s way, had knocked the springing 
brute sideways in mid-air with a quick sickle- 
cut of his head, that he had invented all bv 




TOOMAI OF THE ELEPHANTS 247 


himself; had knocked him over, and kneeled 
upon him with his huge knees till the life went 
out with a gasp and a howl, and there was 
only a fluffy striped thing on the ground for 
Kala Nag to pull by the tail. 

‘‘ Yes,” said Big Toomai, his driver, the son 
of Black Toomai who had taken him to Abys¬ 
sinia, and grandson of Toomai of the Ele¬ 
phants who had seen him caught, “ there is 
nothing that the Black Snake fears except me. 
He has seen three generations of us feed him 
and groom him, and he will live to see four.” 

« He is afraid of me also,” said Little 
Toomai, standing up to his full height of four 
feet, with only one rag upon him. He was 
ten years old, the eldest son of Big Toomai, 
and, according to custom, he would take his 
father’s place on Kala Nag’s neck when he 
grew up, and would handle the heavy iron 
arikuSf the elephant-goad that had been worn 
smooth by his father, and his grandfather, 
and his great-grandfather. He knew what 



248 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


he was talking of; for he had been bom under 
Kala Nag’s shadow, had played with the end 
of his trunk before he could walk, had taken 
him down to water as soon as he could walk, 
and Kala Nag would no more have dreamed 
of disobeying his shrill little orders than he 
would have dreamed of killing him on that 
day when Big Toomai carried the little brown 
baby under Kala Nag’s tusks, and told him 
to salute his master that was to be^ 

“ Yes,” said Little Toomai, “ he is afraid 
of me*^ and he took long strides up to Kala 
Nag, called him a fat old pig, and made him 
lift up his feet one after the other. 

‘‘ Wah! ” said Little Toomai, “ thou art a 
big elephant,” and he wagged his fluffy head, 
quoting his father. “ The Government may 
pay for elephants, but they belong to us 
mahouts. When thou art old, Kala Nag, 
there will come some rich Rajah, and he will 
buy thee from the Government, on account 
of thy size and thy manners, and then thou 




KALA NAG 



I 




























TOOMAI OF THE ELEPHANTS 249 


wilt have nothing to do but to carry gold ear¬ 
rings in thy ears, and a gold howdah on thy 
back, and a red cloth covered with gold on 
thy sides, and walk at the head of the pro¬ 
cessions of the King. Then I shall sit on 
thy neck, O Kala Nag, with a silver ankus, 
and men will run before us with golden sticks, 
crying, ‘ Room for the King’s elephant! ’ 
That will be good, Kala Nag, but not so good 
as this hunting in the jungles.” 

“ Umph! ” said Big Toomai. “ Thou art 
a boy, and as wild as a buffalo-calf. This 
running up and down among the hills is not 
the best Government service. I am getting 
old, and I do not love wild elephants. Give 
me brick elephant-lines, one stall to each ele¬ 
phant, and big stumps to tie them to safely, 
and flat, broad roads to exercise upon, instead 
of this come-and-go camping. Aha, the 
Cawnpore barracks were good. There was a 
bazaar close by, and only three hours’ work 
a day.” 



250 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


Little Toomai remembered the Cawnpore 
elephant-lines and said nothing. He very 
much preferred the camp life, and hated those 
broad, flat roads, with the daily grubbing for 
grass in the forage-reserve, and the long 
hours when there was nothing to do except 
to watch Kala Nag fidgeting in his pickets. 

What Little Toomai liked was to scramble 
up bridle-paths that only an elephant could 
take; the dip into the valley below; the 
glimpses of the wild elephants browsing miles 
away; the rush of the frightened pig and 
peacock under Kala Nag’s feet; the blinding 
warm rains, when all the hills and valleys 
smoked; the beautiful misty mornings when 
nobody knew where they would camp that 
night; the steady, cautious drive of the wild 
elephants, and the mad rush and blaze and 
hullaballoo of the last night’s drive, when the 
elephants poured into the stockade like boul¬ 
ders in a lands'lide, found that they could not 
get out, and flung themselves at the heavy 



TOOMAI OF THE ELEPHANTS 251 


posts only to be driven back by yells and 
flaring torches and volleys of blank cartridge. 

Even a little boy could be of use there, 
and Toomai was as useful as three boys. He 
would get his torch and wave it, and yell with 
the best. But the really good time came 
when the driving out began, and the Keddah, 
that is, the stockade, looked like a picture of 
the end of the world, and men had to make 
signs to one another, because they could not 
hear themselves speak. Then Little Toomai 
would climb up to the top of one of the quiv¬ 
ering stockade-posts, his sun-bleached brown 
hair flying loose all over his shoulders, and 
he looking like a goblin in the torch-light; 
and as soon as there was a lull you could hear 
his high-pitched yells of encouragement to 
Kala Nag, above the trumpeting and crash¬ 
ing, and snapping of ropes, and groans of the 
tethered elephants. “ Mail, mail, Kala Nag! 
(Go on, go on. Black Snake!) Dant do! 
(Give him the tusk!) Somalo! Somalo! 



25^ THE JUNGLE BOOK 


(Careful, careful!) Maro! Mar! (Hit 
him, hit him!) Mind the post! Arre! 
Arret Hai! Yai! Kya-a-ah! ” he would 
shout, and the big fight between Kala Nag 
and the wild elephant would sway to and fro 
across the Keddah, and the old elephant- 
catchers would wipe the sweat out of their 
eyes, and find time to nod to Little Toomai 
wriggling with joy on the top of the posts. 

He did more than wriggle. One night he 
slid down from the post and slipped in be¬ 
tween the elephants, and threw up the loose 
end of a rope, which had dropped, to a driver 
who was trying to get a purchase on the leg 
of a kicking young calf (calves always give 
more trouble than full-grown animals). 
Kala Nag saw him, caught him in his trunk, 
and handed him up to Big Toomai, who 
slapped him then and there, and put him back 
on the post. 

Next morning he gave him a scolding, and 
said: “Are not good brick elephant-lines 



I 


TOOMAI OF THE ELEPHANTS 25S 

and a little tent-carrying enough, that thou 
must needs go elephant-catching on thy own 
account, little worthless? Now those foolish 
hunters, whose pay is less than my pay, have 
spoken to Petersen Sahib of the matter.” 
Little Toomai was frightened. He did not 
know much of white men, but Petersen Sahib 
was the greatest white man in the world to 
him. He was the head of all the Keddah 
operations — the man who caught all the ele¬ 
phants for the Government of India, and who 
knew more about the ways of elephants than 
any living man. 

What — what will happen ? ” said Little 
Toomai. 

“ Happen! the worst that can happen. 
Petersen Sahib is a madman. Else why 
should he go hunting these wild devils? He 
may even require thee to be an elephant- 
catcher, to sleep anywhere in these fever- 
filled jungles, and at last to be trampled to 
death in the Keddah. It is well that this 




254 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


nonsense ends safely. Next week the catch¬ 
ing is over, and we of the plains are sent back 
to our stations. Then we will march on 
smooth roads, and forget all this hunting. 
But, son, I am angry that thou shouldst 
meddle in the business that belongs to these 
dirty Assamese jungle-folk. Kala Nag will 
obey none but me, so I must go with him into 
the Keddah, but he is only a fighting ele¬ 
phant, and he does not help to rope them. 
So I sit at my ease, as befits a mahout,— not 
a mere hunter,— a mahout, I say, and a man 
who gets a pension at the end of his service. 
Is the family of Toomai of the Elephants to 
be trodden underfoot in the dirt of a Ked¬ 
dah Bad one! Wicked one! Worthless 
son! Go and wash Kala Nag and attend to 
his ears, and see that there are no thorns in 
his feet; or else Petersen Sahib will surely 
catch thee and make thee a wild hunter — a 
follower of elephant’s foot-tracks, a jungle- 
bear. Bah! Shame! Go! ” 



TOOMAI OF THE ELEPHANTS 255 


Little Toomai went off without saying a 
word, but he told Kala Nag all his grievances 
while he was examining his feet. “No mat¬ 
ter,” said Little Toomai, turning up the 
fringe of Kala Nag’s huge right ear. 
“ They have said my name to Petersen Sahib, 
and perhaps — and perhaps — and perhaps 
— who knows ? Hai! That is a big thorn 
that I have pulled out! ” 

The next few days were spent in getting 
the elephants together, in walking the newly 
caught wild elephants up and down between 
a couple of tame ones, to prevent them from 
giving too much trouble on the downward 
march to the plains, and in taking stock of 
the blankets and ropes and things that had 
been worn out or lost in the forest. 

Petersen Sahib came in on his clever she- 
elephant Pudmini; he had been paying off 
other camps among the hills, for the season 
was coming to an end, and there was a native 
clerk sitting at a table under a tree, to pay 




256 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


the drivers their wages. As each man was 
paid he went back to his elephant, and joined 
the line that stood ready to start. The 
catchers, and hunters, and beaters, the men 
of the regular Keddah, who stayed in the 
jungle year in and year out, sat on the backs 
of the elephants that belonged to Petersen 
Sahib’s permanent force, or leaned against 
the trees with their guns across their arms, 
and made fun of the drivers who were going 
away, and laughed when the newly caught 
elephants broke the line and ran about. 

Big Toomai went up to the clerk with Lit¬ 
tle Toomai behind him, and Machua Appa, 
the head-tracker, said in an undertone to a 
friend of his, “ There goes one piece of good 
elephant-stuff at least. ’T is a pity to send 
that young jungle-cock to moult in the 
plains.” 

Now Petersen Sahib had ears all over him, 
as a man must have who listens to the most 
silent of all living things — the wild ele- 



TOOMAI OF THE ELEPHANTS 257 


phant. He turned where he was lying all 
along on Pudmini’s back, and said, “ What 
is that? I did not know of a man among the 
plain-drivers who had wit enough to rope 
even a dead elephant.” 

This is not a man, but a boy. He went 
into the Keddah at the last drive, and threw 
Barmao there the rope, when we were trying 
to get that young calf with the blotch on his 
shoulder away from his mother.” 

Machua Appa pointed at Little Toomai, 
and Petersen Sahib looked, and Little 
Toomai bowed to the earth. 

“ He throw a rope ? He is smaller than a 
picket-pin. Little one, what is thy name ? ” 
said Petersen Sahib. 

Little Toomai was too frightened to 
speak, but Kala Nag was behind him, and 
Toomai made a sign with his hand, and the 
elephant caught him up in his trunk and 
held him level with Pudmini’s forehead, in 
front of the great Petersen Sahib. Then 




258 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


Little Toomai covered his face with his hands, 
for he was only a child, and except where 
elephants were concerned, he was just as 
bashful as a child could be. 

“ Oho f ” said Petersen Sahib, smiling un¬ 
derneath his mustache, ‘‘ and why didst thou 
teach thy elephant that trick? Was it to 
help thee steal green com from the roofs of 
the houses when the ears are put out to 
dry? ” 

‘‘ Not green corn. Protector of the Poor, 
— melons,” said Little Toomai, and all the 
men sitting about broke into a roar of laugh¬ 
ter. Most of them had taught their ele¬ 
phants that trick when they were boys. Lit¬ 
tle Toomai was hanging eight feet up in the 
air, and he wished very much that he were 
eight feet underground. 

‘‘ He is Toomai, my son. Sahib,” said Big 
Toomai, scowling. “ He is a very bad boy, 
and he will end in jail, Sahib.” 

“ Of that I have my doubts,” said Peter- 




TOOMAI OF THE ELEPHANTS 259 


sen Sahib. “ A boy who can face a full 
Keddah at his age does not end in jails. See, 
little one, here are four annas to spend in 
sweetmeats because thou hast a little head 
under that great thatch of hair. In time thou 
mayest become a hunter too.” Big Toomai 
scowled more than ever. “ Remember, 
though, that Keddahs are not good for chil¬ 
dren to play in,” Petersen Sahib went on. 

“Must I never go there, Sahib ” asked 
Little Toomai, with a big gasp. 

“ Yes.” Petersen Sahib smiled again. 
“ When thou hast seen the elephants dance. 
That is the proper time. Come to me when 
thou hast seen the elephants dance, and then 
I will let thee go into all the Keddahs.” 

There was another roar of laughter, for 
that is an old joke among elephant-catchers, 
and it means just never. There are great 
cleared flat places hidden away in the forests 
that are called elephants’ ballrooms, but even 
these are found only by accident, and no man 




9.60 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


has ever seen the elephants dance. When a 
driver boasts of his skill and bravery the 
other drivers say, ‘‘ And when didst thou see 
the elephants dance ? ” 

Kala Nag put Little Toomai down, and he 
bowed to the earth again and went away 
with his father, and gave the silver four- 
anna piece to his mother, who was nursing 
his baby-brother, and they all were put up 
on Kala Nag’s back, and the line of grunting, 
squealing elephants rolled down the hill-path 
to the plains. It was a very lively march on 
account of the new elephants, who gave trou¬ 
ble at every ford, and who needed coaxing 
or beating every other minute. 

Big Toomai prodded Kala Nag spitefully, 
for he was very angry, but Little Toomai was 
too happy to speak. Petersen Sahib had no¬ 
ticed him, and given him money, so he felt 
as a private soldier would feel if he had 
been called out of the ranks and praised by 
his commander-in-chief. 




TOOMAI OF THE ELEPHANTS 261 


‘‘ What did Petersen Sahib mean by the 
elephant-dance? ” he said, at last, softly to 
his mother. 

Big Toomai heard him and grunted. 

That thou shouldst never be one of these 
hill-buifaloes of trackers. That was what he 
meant. Oh you in front, what is blocking 
the way? ” 

An Assamese driver, two or three elephants 
ahead, turned round angrily, crying: ‘‘ Bring 
up Kala Nag, and knock this youngster of 
mine into good behavior. Why should Peter¬ 
sen Sahib have chosen me to go down with 
you donkeys of the rice-fields? Lay your 
beast alongside, Toomai, and let him prod 
with his tusks. By all the Gods of the Hills, 
these new elephants are possessed, or else they 
can smell their companions in the jungle.” 

Kala Nag hit the new elephant in the ribs 
and knocked the wind out of him, as Big 
Toomai said, ‘‘ We have swept the hills of 
wild elephants at the last catch. It is only 



262 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


your carelessness in driving. Must I keep 
order along the whole line? ” 

“ Hear him! ” said the other driver. “ We 
have swept the hills! Ho! ho! You are 
very wise, you plains-people. Any one but 
a mudhead who never saw the jungle would 
know that they know that the drives are 
ended for the season. Therefore all the wild 
elephants to-night will — but why should I 
waste wisdom on a river-turtle? ” 

“ What will they do? ” Little Toomai 
called out. 

“ Ohe, little one. Art thou there? Well, 
I will tell thee, for thou hast a cool head. 
They will dance, and it behooves thy father, 
who has swept all the hills of all the elephants, 
to double-chain his pickets to-night.” 

“What talk is this?” said Big Toomai. 
“For forty years, father and son, we have 
tended elephants, and we have never heard 
such moonshine about dances.” 

“ Yes; but a plains-man who lives in a 



TOOMAI OF THE ELEPHANTS 263 


hut knows only the four walls of his hut. 
Well, leave thy elephants unshackled to-night 
and see what comes; as for their dancing, I 
have seen the place where — Bapree-Bap! 
how many windings has the Dihang River? 
Here is another ford, and we must swim the 
calves. Stop still, you behind there.” 

And in this way, talking and wrangling 
and splashing through the rivers, they made 
their first march to a sort of receiving-camp 
for the new elephants; but they lost their 
tempers long before they got there. 

Then the elephants were chained by their 
hind legs to their big stumps of pickets, and 
extra ropes were fitted to the new elephants, 
and the fodder was piled before them, and 
the hill-drivers went back to Petersen Sahib 
through the afternoon light, telling the plains- 
drivers to be extra careful that night, and 
laughing when the plains-drivers asked the 
reason. 

Little Toomai attended to Kala Nag’s sup- 



264 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


per, and as evening fell, wandered through 
the camp, unspeakably happy, in search of 
a tom-tom. When an Indian child’s heart is 
full, he does not run about and make a noise 
in an irregular fashion. He sits down to a 
sort of revel all by himself. And Little 
Toomai had been spoken to by Petersen 
Sahib! If he had not found what he wanted 
I believe he would have burst. But the 
sweetmeat-seller in the camp lent him a little 
tom-tom — a drum beaten with the flat of the 
hand — and he sat down, cross-legged, be¬ 
fore Kala Nag as the stars began to come out, 
the tom-tom in his lap, and he thumped and 
he thumped and he thumped, and the more he 
thought of the great honor that had been 
done to him, the more he thumped, all alone 
among the elephant-fodder. There was no 
tune and no words, but the thumping made 
him happy. 

The new elephants strained at their ropes, 
and squealed and trumpeted from time to 



TOOMAI OF THE ELEPHANTS 265 


time, and he could hear his mother in the 
camp hut putting his small brother to sleep 
with an old, old song about the great God 
Shiv, who once told all the animals what they 
should eat. It is a very soothing lullaby, and 
the first verse says: 

Shiv, who poured the harvest and made the winds to 
blow, 

Sitting at the doorways of a day of long ago, 

Gave to each his portion, food and toil and fate. 
From the King upon the guddee to the Beggar at the 
gate. 

All things made he — Shiva the Preserver. 

Mahadeo! Mahadeo! he made all,— 

Thorn for the camel, fodder for the kine. 

And mother’s heart for sleepy head, O little son of 
mine! 

Little Toomai came in with a joyous tunk- 
a-turik at the end of each verse, till he felt 
sleepy and stretched himself on the fodder 
at Kala Nag’s side. 

At last the elephants began to lie down one 
after another as is their custom, till only 
Kala Nag at the right of the line was left 
standing up; and he rocked slowly from side 




266 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


to side, his ears put forward to listen to the 
night wind as it blew very slowly across the 
hills. The air was full of all the night noises 
that, taken together, make one big silence — 
the click of one bamboo-stem against the 
other, the rustle of something alive in the 
undergrowth, the scratch and squawk of a 
half-waked bird (birds are awake in the night 
much more often than we imagine), and the 
fall of water ever so far away. Little Too- 
mai slept for some time, and when he waked 
it was brilliant moonlight, and Kala Nag was 
still standing up with his ears cocked. Little 
Toomai turned, rustling in the fodder, and 
watched the curve of his big back against 
half the stars in heaven, and while he watched 
he heard, so far away that it sounded no 
more than a pinhole of noise pricked through 
the stillness, the “ hoot-toot ” of a wild ele¬ 
phant. 

All the elephants in the lines jumped up 
as if they had been shot, and their grunts 




TOOMAI OF THE ELEPHANTS 267 


at last waked the sleeping mahouts, and they 
came out and drove in the picket-pegs with 
big mallets, and tightened this rope and 
knotted that till all was quiet. One new ele¬ 
phant had nearly grubbed up his picket, and 
Big Toomai took off Kala Nag’s leg-chain 
and shackled that elephant fore foot to hind 
foot, but slipped a loop of grass-string round 
Kala Nag’s leg, and told him to remember 
that he was tied fast. He knew that he and 
his father and his grandfather had done the 
very same thing hundreds of times before. 
Kala Nag did not answer to the order by 
gurgling, as he usually did. He stood still, 
looking out across the moonlight, his head a 
little raised and his ears spread like fans, up 
to the great folds of the Garo hills. 

“ Look to him if he grows restless in the 
night,” said Big Toomai to Little Toomai, 
and he went into the hut and slept. Little 
Toomai was just going to sleep, too, when 
he heard the coir string snap with a little 




268 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


“ tang,” and Kala Nag rolled out of his pick¬ 
ets as slowly and as silently as a cloud rolls 
out of the mouth of a valley. Little Toomai 
pattered after him, bare-footed, down the 
road in the moonlight, calling under his 
breath, “Kala Nag! Kala Nag! Take me 
with you, O Kala Nag!” The elephant 
turned without a sound, took three strides 
back to the boy in the moonlight, put down 
his trunk, swung him up to his neck, and 
almost before Little Toomai had settled his 
knees, slipped into the forest. 

There was one blast of furious trumpeting 
from the lines, and then the silence shut down 
on everything, and Kala Nag began to move. 
Sometimes a tuft of high grass washed along 
his sides as a wave washes along the sides of 
a ship, and sometimes a cluster of wild-pep¬ 
per vines would scrape along his back, or a 
bamboo would creak where his shoulder 
touched it; but between those times he 
moved absolutely without any sound, drifting 



TOOMAI OF THE ELEPHANTS 269 


through the thick Garo forest as though it 
had been smoke. He was going uphill, but 
though Little Toomai watched the stars in 
the rifts of the trees, he could not tell in what 
direction. 

Then Kala Nag reached the crest of the 
ascent and stopped for a minute, and Little 
Toomai could see the tops of the trees lying 
all speckled and furry under the moonlight 
for miles and miles, and the blue-white mist 
over the river in the hollow. Toomai leaned 
forward and looked, and he felt that the for¬ 
est was awake below him — awake and alive 
and crowded. A big brown fruit-eating bat 
brushed past his ear; a porcupine’s quills 
rattled in the thicket, and in the darkness be¬ 
tween the tree-stems he heard a hog-bear dig¬ 
ging hard in the moist warm earth, and snuf¬ 
fing as it digged. 

Then the branches closed over his head 
again, and Kala Nag began to go down into 
the valley — not quietly this time, but as a 




270 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


runaway gun goes down a steep bank — in 
one rush. The huge limbs moved as steadily 
as pistons, eight feet to each stride, and the 
wrinkled skin of the elbow-points rustled. 
The undergrowth on either side of him ripped 
with a noise like tom canvas, and the saplings 
that he heaved away right and left with his 
shoulders sprang back again, and banged him 
on the flank, and great trails of creepers, all 
matted together, hung from his tusks as he 
threw his head from side to side and plowed 
out his pathway. Then Little Toomai laid 
himself down close to the great neck, lest a 
swinging bough should sweep him to the 
ground, and he wished that he were back in 
the lines again. 

The grass began to get squashy, and Kala 
Nag’s feet sucked and squelched as he put 
them down, and the night mist at the bottom 
of the valley chilled Little Toomai. There 
was a splash and a trample, and the rush of 
running water, and Kala Nag strode through 




TOOMAI OF THE ELEPHANTS 271 


the bed of the river, feeling his way at each 
step. Above the noise of the water, as it 
swirled round the elephant’s legs. Little Too- 
mai could hear more splashing and some 
trumpeting both up-stream and down — 
great grunts and angry snortings, and all the 
mist about him seemed to be full of rolling 
wavy shadows. 

“ Ai! ” he said, half aloud, his teeth chat¬ 
tering. “ The elephant-folk are out to-night. 
It is the dance, then.” 

Kala Nag swashed out of the water, blew 
his trunk clear, and began another climb; 
but this time he was not alone, and he had 
not to make his path. That was made al¬ 
ready, six feet wide, in front of him, where 
the bent jungle-grass was trying to recover 
itself and stand up. Many elephants must 
have gone that way only a few minutes before. 
Little Toomai looked back, and behind him a 
great wild tusker with his little pig’s eyes 
glowing like hot coals, was just lifting him- 




272 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


self out of the misty river. Then the trees 
closed up again, and they went on and up, 
with trumpetings and crashings, and the 
sound of breaking branches on every side of 
them. 

At last Kala Nag stood still between two 
tree-trunks at the very top of the hill. They 
were part of a circle of trees that grew round 
an irregular space of some three or four 
acres, and in all that space, as Little Toomai 
could see, the ground had been trampled 
down as hard as a brick floor. Some trees 
grew in the center of the clearing, but their 
bark was rubbed away, and the white wood 
beneath showed all shiny and polished in the 
patches of moonlight. There were creepers 
hanging from the upper branches, and the 
bells of the flowers of the creepers, great 
waxy white things like convolvuluses, hung 
down fast asleep; but within the limits of the 
clearing there was not a single blade of green 
—-nothing but the trampled earth. 




ELEPHANT-DANCE 












TOOMAI OF THE ELEPHANTS 273 


The moonlight showed it all iron-gray, ex¬ 
cept where some elephants stood upon it, and 
their shadows were inky black. Little Too- 
mai looked, holding his breath, with his eyes 
starting out of his head, and as he looked, 
more and more and more elephants swung out 
into the open from between the tree-trunks. 
Little Toomai could count only up to ten, 
and he counted again and again on his fingers 
till he lost count of the tens, and his head 
began to swim. Outside the clearing he 
could hear them crashing in the under¬ 
growth as they worked their way up the 
hillside; but as soon as they were within the 
circle of the tree-trunks they moved like 
ghosts. 

There were white-tusked wild males, with 
fallen leaves and nuts and twigs lying in the 
wrinkles of their necks and the folds of their 
ears; fat slow-footed she-elephants, with rest¬ 
less, little pinky-black calves only three or 
four feet high running under their stomachs; 



274 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


young elephants with their tusks just begin¬ 
ning to show, and very proud of them; lanky, 
scraggy old-maid elephants, with their hollow 
anxious faces, and trunks like rough bark; 
savage old bull-elephants, scarred from shoul¬ 
der to flank with great weals and cuts of 
bygone fights, and the caked dirt of their 
solitary mud-baths dropping from their shoul¬ 
ders ; and there was one with a broken tusk 
and the marks of the full-stroke, the terrible 
drawing scrape, of a tiger’s claws on his 
side. 

They were standing head to head, or walk¬ 
ing to and fro across the ground in couples, 
or rocking and swaying all by themselves -— 
scores and scores of elephants. 

Toomai knew that so long as he lay still 
on Kala Nag’s neck nothing would happen to 
him; for even in the rush and scramble of a 
Keddah-drive a wild elephant does not reach 
up with his trunk and drag a man off the 
neck of a tame elephant; and these elephants 




TOOMAI OF THE ELEPHANTS 275 


were not thinking of men that night. Once 
they started and put their ears forward when 
they heard the chinking of a leg-iron in the 
forest, but it was Pudmini, Petersen Sahib’s 
pet elephant, her chain snapped short off, 
grunting, snuffling up the hillside. She must 
have broken her pickets, and come straight 
from Petersen Sahib’s camp; and Little Too- 
mai saw another elephant, one that he did 
not know, with deep rope-galls on his back 
and breast. He, too, must have run away 
from some camp in the hills about. 

At last there was no sound of any more 
elephants moving in the forest, and Kala Nag 
rolled out from his station between the trees 
and went into the middle of the crowd, cluck¬ 
ing and gurgling, and all the elephants began 
to talk in their own tongue, and to move 
about. 

Still lying down. Little Toomai looked down 
upon scores and scores of broad backs, and 
wagging ears, and tossing trunks, and little 




276 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


rolling eyes. He heard the click of tusks as 
they crossed other tusks by accident, and the 
dry rustle of trunks twined together, and the 
chafing of enormous sides and shoulders in 
the crowd, and the incessant flick and hissh 
of the great tails. Then a cloud came over 
the moon, and he sat in black darkness; but 
the quiet, steady hustling and pushing and 
gurgling went on just the same. He knew 
that there were elephants all round Kala Nag, 
and that there was no chance of backing him 
out of the assembly; so he set his teeth and 
shivered. In a Keddah at least there was 
torch-light and shouting, but here he was 
all alone in the dark, and once a trunk came 
up and touched him on the knee. 

Then an elephant trumpeted, and they all 
took it up for five or ten terrible seconds. 
The dew from the trees above spattered 
down like rain on the unseen backs, and a dull 
booming noise began, not very loud at first, 
and Little Toomai could not tell what it was; 



I 


TOOMAI OF THE ELEPHANTS m 

but it grew and grew, and Kala Nag lifted up 
one fore foot and then the other, and brought 
them down on the ground — one-two, one- 
two, as steadily as trip-hammers. The ele¬ 
phants were stamping altogether now, and 
it sounded like a war-drum beaten at the 
mouth of a cave. The dew fell from the trees 
till there was no more left to fall, and the 
booming went on, and the ground rocked and 
shivered, and Little Toomai put his hands 
up to his ears to shut out the sound. But 
it was all one gigantic jar that ran through 
him — this stamp of hundreds of heavy feet 
on the raw earth. Once or twice he could 
feel Kala Nag and all the others surge for¬ 
ward a few strides, and the thumping would 
change to the crushing sound of juicy 
green things being bruised, but in a minute 
or two the boom of feet on hard earth began 
again. A tree was creaking and groaning 
somewhere near him. He put out his arm 
and felt the bark, but Kala Nag moved for- 



278 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


ward, still tramping, and he could not tell 
where he was in the clearing. There was no 
sound from the elephants, except once, when 
two or three little calves squeaked together. 
Then he heard a thump and a shuffle, and the 
booming went on. It must have lasted fully 
two hours, and Little Toomai ached in every 
nerve; but he knew by the smell of the night 
air that the dawn was coming. 

The morning broke in one sheet of pale 
yellow behind the green hills, and the boom¬ 
ing stopped with the first ray, as though the 
light had been an order. Before Little Too¬ 
mai had got the ringing out of his head, 
before even he had shifted his position, there 
was not an elephant in sight except Kala 
Nag, Pudmini, and the elephant with the 
rope-galls, and there was neither sign nor 
rustle nor whisper down the hillsides to show 
where the others had gone. 

Little Toomai stared again and again. 
The clearing, as he remembered it, had grown 




TOOMAI OF THE ELEPHANTS 279 


in the night. More trees stood in the mid¬ 
dle of it, but the undergrowth and the jun¬ 
gle-grass at the sides had been rolled back. 
Little Toomai stared once more. Now he 
understood the trampling. The elephants 
had stamped out more room — had stamped 
the thick grass and juicy cane to trash, the 
trash into slivers, the slivers into tiny fibers, 
and the fibers into hard earth. 

“ Wah! ” said Little Toomai, and his eyes 
were very heavy. “ Kala Nag, my lord, let 
us keep by Pudmini and go to Petersen 
Sahib’s camp, or I shall drop from thy neck.” 

The third elephant watched the two go 
away, snorted, wheeled round, and took his 
own path. He may have belonged to some 
little native king’s establishment, fifty or 
sixty or a hundred miles away. 

Two hours later, as Petersen Sahib was 
eating early breakfast, his elephants, who had 
been double-chained that night, began to 
trumpet, and Pudmini, mired to the shoul- 




280 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


ders, with Kala Nag, very foot-sore, sham¬ 
bled into the camp. 

Little Toomai’s face was gray and pinched, 
and his hair was full of leaves and drenched 
with dew; but he tried to salute Petersen 
Sahib, and cried faintly: “ The dance — 

the elephant-dance! I have seen it, and — 
I die!’’ As Kala Nag sat down, he slid off 
his neck in a dead faint. 

But, since native children have no nerves 
worth speaking of, in two hours he was lying 
very contentedly in Petersen Sahib’s ham¬ 
mock with Petersen Sahib’s shooting-coat 
under his head, and a glass of warm milk, a 
little brandy, with a dash of quinine inside 
of him, and while the old hairy, scarred hunt¬ 
ers of the jungle sat three-deep before him, 
looking at him as though he were a spirit, 
he told his tale in short words, as a child 
will, and wound up with: 

“ Now, if I lie in one word, send men to 
see, and they will find that the elephant-folk 




TOOMAI OF THE ELEPHANTS 281 


have trampled down more room in their dance- 
room, and they will find ten and ten, and 
many times ten, tracks leading to that dance- 
room. They made more room with their 
feet. I have seen it. Kala Nag took me, 
and I saw. Also Kala Nag is very leg- 
weary ! ” 

Little Toomai lay back and slept all 
through the long afternoon and into the twi¬ 
light, and while he slept Petersen Sahib and 
Machua Appa followed the track of the two 
elephants for fifteen miles across the hills. 
Petersen Sahib had spent eighteen years in 
catching elephants, and he had only once 
before found such a dance-place. Machua 
Appa had no need to look twice at the clear¬ 
ing to see what had been done there, or to 
scratch with his toe in the packed, rammed 
earth. 

‘‘ The child speaks truth,” said he. All 
this was done last night, and I have counted 
seventy tracks crossing the river. See, Sahib, 




282 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


where Pudmini’s leg-iron cut the bark of that 
tree! Yes; she was there too.” 

They looked at each other, and up and 
down, and they wondered; for the ways of 
elephants are beyond the wit of any man, 
black or white, to fathom. 

‘‘ Forty years and five,” said Machua 
Appa, “ have I followed my lord, the elephant, 
but never have I heard that any child of man 
had seen what this child has seen. By all 
the Gods of the Hills, it is — what can we 
say ? ” and he shook his head. 

When they got back to camp it was time 
for the evening meal. Petersen Sahib ate 
alone in his tent, but he gave orders that the 
camp should have two sheep and some fowls, 
as well as a double-ration of floor and rice 
and salt, for he knew that there would be a 
feast. 

Big Toomai had come up hot-foot from 
the camp in the plains to search for his son 
and his elephant, and now that he had found 





TOOMAI OF THE ELEPHANTS 283 


them he looked at them as though he were 
afraid of them both. And there was a feast 
by the blazing camp-fires in front of the lines 
of picketed elephants, and Little Toomai was 
the hero of it all; and the big brown elephant- 
catchers, the trackers and drivers and ropers, 
and the men who know all the secrets of break¬ 
ing the wildest elephants, passed him from 
one to the other, and they marked his fore¬ 
head with blood from the breast of a newly 
killed jungle-cock, to show that he was a 
forester, initiated and free of all the jungles. 

And at last, when the flames died down, 
and the red light of the logs made the ele¬ 
phants look as though they had been dipped 
in blood too, Machua Appa, the head of all 
the drivers of all the Keddahs — Machua 
Appa, Petersen Sahib’s other self, who had 
never seen a made road in forty years: 
Machua Appa, who was so great that he 
had no other name than Machua Appa — 
leaped to his feet, with Little Toomai held 




284 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


high in the air above his head, and shouted: 
“ Listen, my brothers. Listen, too, you my 
lords in the lines there, for I, Machua Appa, 
am speaking! This little one shall no more 
be called Little Toomai, but Toomai of 
the Elephants, as his great-grandfather was 
called before him. What never man has 
seen he has seen through the long night, and 
the favor of the elephant-folk and of the 
Gods of the Jungles is with him. He shall 
become a great tracker; he shall become 
greater than I, even I, Machua Appa! He 
shall follow the new trail, and the stale trail, 
and the mixed trail, with a clear eye! He 
shall take no harm in the Keddah when he 
runs under their bellies to rope the wild 
tuskers; and if he slips before the feet of the 
charging bull-elephant that bull-elephant 
shall know who he is and shall not crush 
him. Aihai! my lords in the chains,”—he 
whirled up the line of pickets,—“ here is the 
little one that has seen your dances in your 



TOOMAl OF THE ELEPHANTS 













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TOOMAI OF THE ELEPHANTS 285 


hidden places — the sight that never man 
saw! Give him honor, my lords! Salaam 
karo, my children. Make your salute to 
Toomai of the Elephants! Gunga Pershad, 
ahaa! Hira Guj, Birchi Guj, Kuttar Guj, 
ahaa ! Pudmini,— thou hast seen him at the 
dance, and thou too, Kala Nag, my pearl 
among elephants! — ahaa! Together! To 
Toomai of the Elephants. Barrao! ” 

And at that last wild yell the whole line 
flung up their trunks till the tips touched 
their foreheads, and broke out into the 
full salute — the crashing trumpet-peal that 
only the Viceroy of India hears, the Salaamut 
of the Keddah. 

But it was all for the sake of Little Too¬ 
mai, who had seen what never man had seen 
before — the dance of the elephants at night 
and alone in the heart of the Garo hills! 



286 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


SHIV AND THE GRASSHOPPER 

(the song that toomai’s mother sang to 
THE baby) 

Shiv, who poured the harvest and made the 
winds to blow, 

Sitting at the doorways of a day of long ago. 

Gave to each his portion, food and toil and 
fate. 

From the King upon the guddee to the Beggar 
at the gate. 

^All things made he — Shiva the Preserver, 
Mahadeo! Mahadeo! he made all ,— 

Thorn for the camel, fodder for the kine. 
And mother's heart for sleepy head, O little 
son of mine! 

Wheat he gave to rich folk, millet to the 
poor. 

Broken scraps for holy men that beg from door 
to door; 

Cattle to the tiger, carrion to the kite, 

And rags and bones to wicked wolves without 
the wall at night. 

Naught he found too lofty, none he saw too 
low — 




TOOMAI OF THE ELEPHANTS 287 


Parbati beside him watched them come and 

go; 

Thought to cheat her husband, turning Shiv to 
jest — 

Stole the little grasshopper and hid it in her 
breast. 

So she tricked him, Shiva the Preserver, 
Mahadeo! Mahadeo! turn and see. 

Tall are the camels, heavy are the kine. 

But this was least of little things, O little 
son of mine! 

When the dole was ended, laughingly she said, 

** Master, of a million mouths is not one un¬ 
fed?’’ 

Laughing, Shiv made answer, “ All have had 
their part. 

Even he, the little one, hidden ’neath thy 
heart.” 

From her breast she plucked it, Parbati the 
thief. 

Saw the Least of Little Things gnawed a new- 
grown leaf! 

Saw and feared and wondered, making prayer 
to Shiv, 

Who hath surely given meat to all that 
live. 




288 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


All things made he — Shiva the Preserver, 
Mahadeo! Mahadeo! he made all ,— 

Thorn for the camel, fodder for the Jcine, 

And mother*s heart for sleepy head, 0 little 
son of mine! 




HER MAJESTY’S SERVANTS 


You can work it out by Fractions or by simple Rule 
of Three, 

But the way of Tweedle-dum is not the way of 
Tweedle-dee. 

You can twist it, you can turn it, you can plait it 
till you drop. 

But the way of Pilly-Winky’s not the way of 
Winkie-Pop! 



HER MAJESTY’S SERVANTS 

I T had been raining heavily for one whole 
month — raining on a camp of thirty 
thousand men, thousands of camels, elephants, 
horses, bullocks, and mules, all gathered to¬ 
gether at a place called Rawal Pindi, to be 
reviewed by the Viceroy of India. He was 
receiving a visit from the Amir of Afghan¬ 
istan — a wild king of a very wild country; 
and the Amir had brought with him for a 
bodyguard eight hundred men and horses who 
had never seen a camp or a locomotive before 
in their lives — savage men and savage 
horses from somewhere at the back of Central 
Asia. Every night a mob of these horses 
would be sure to break their heel-ropes, and 
stampede up and down the camp through 
291 





292 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


the mud in the dark, or the camels would 
break loose and run about and fall over the 
ropes of the tents, and you can imagine how 
pleasant that was for men trying to go to 
sleep. My tent lay far away from the camel 
lines, and I thought it was safe; but one night 
a man popped his head in and shouted, Get 
out, quick! They ’re coming! My tent’s 
gone! ” 

I knew who “ they ” were; so I put on 
my boots and waterproof and scuttled out 
into the slush. Little Vixen, my fox-terrier, 
went out through the other side; and then 
there was a roaring and a grunting and bub¬ 
bling, and I saw the tent cave in, as the pole 
snapped, and begin to dance about like a 
mad ghost. A camel had blundered into it, 
and wet and angry as I was, I could not help 
laughing. Then I ran on, because I did not 
know how many camels might have got loose, 
and before long I was out of sight of the 
camp, plowing my way through the mud. 




HER MAJESTY’S SERVANTS 293 


At last I fell over the tail-end of a gun, 
and by that knew I was somewhere near the 
Artillery lines where the cannon were stacked 
at night. As I did not want to plowter about 
any more in the drizzle and the dark, I put 
my waterproof over the muzzle of one gun, 
and made a sort of wigwam with two or three 
rammers that I found, and lay along the 
tail of another gun, wondering where Vixen 
had got to, and where I might be. 

Just as I was getting ready to sleep I 
heard a jingle of harness and a grunt, and a 
mule passed me shaking his wet ears. He 
belonged to a screw-gun battery, for I could 
hear the rattle of the straps and rings and 
chains and things on his saddle-pad. The 
screw-guns are tidy little cannon made in 
two pieces, that are screwed together when 
the time comes to use them. They are taken 
up mountains, anywhere that a mule can find 
a road, and they are very useful for fighting 
in rocky country. 




294 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


Behind the mule there was a camel, with 
his big soft feet squelching and slipping in 
the mud, and his neck bobbing to and fro like 
a strayed hen’s. Luckily, I knew enough of 
beast language — not wild-beast language, 
but camp-beast language, of course — from 
the natives to know what he was saying. 

He must have been the one that flopped 
into my tent, for he called to the mule, ‘‘ What 
shall I do.^ Where shall I go? I have 
fought with a white thing that waved, and it 
took a stick and hit me on the neck.” (That 
was my broken tent-pole, and I was very glad 
to know it.) ‘‘ Shall we run on ? ” 

“ Oh, it was you,” said the mule, you 
and your friends, that have been disturbing 
the camp? All right. You ’ll be beaten for 
this in the morning; but I may as well give 
you something on account now.” 

I heard the harness jingle as the mule 
backed and caught the camel two kicks in 
the ribs that rang like a drum. Another 




HER MAJESTY’S SERVANTS 295 


time,” he said, “ you ’ll know better than to 
run through a mule-battery at night, shout¬ 
ing ‘ Thieves and fire! ’ Sit down, and keep 
your silly neck quiet.” 

The camel doubled up camel-fashion, like 
a two-foot rule, and sat down whimpering. 
There was a regular beat of hoofs in the 
darkness, and a big troop-horse cantered up 
as steadily as though he were on parade, 
jumped a gun-tail, and landed close to the 
mule. 

“ It’s disgraceful,” he said, blowing out 
his nostrils. ‘‘ Those camels have racketed 
through our lines again — the third time this 
week. How’s a horse to keep his condition 
if he is n’t allowed to sleep ? Who’s here ? ” 

“ I’m the breech-piece mule of number 
two gun of the First Screw Battery,” said 
the mule, “ and the other’s one of your 
friends. He’s waked me up too. Who are 
you.? ” 

“ Number Fifteen, E troop. Ninth Lancers 



296 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


— Dick Cunliffe’s horse. Stand over a little, 
there.” 

“ Oh, beg your pardon,” said the mule. 
“ It’s too dark to see much. Are n’t these 
camels too sickening for anything? I walked 
out of my lines to get a little peace and 
quiet here.” 

“ My lords,” said the camel humbly, we 
dreamed bad dreams in the night, and we 
were very much afraid. I am only a bag¬ 
gage-camel of the 39th Native Infantry, and 
I am not so brave as you are, my lords.” 

“ Then why the pickets did n’t you stay 
and carry baggage for the 39th Native In¬ 
fantry, instead of running all round the 
camp ? ” said the mule. 

“ They were such very bad dreams,” said 
the camel. “ I am sorry. Listen! What 
is that? Shall we run on again? ” 

Sit down,” said the mule, ‘‘ or you ’ll 
snap your long legs between the guns.” He 
cocked one ear and listened. “ Bullocks! ” 



HER MAJESTY’S SERVANTS 297 


he said; “ gun-bullocks. On my word, you 
and your friends have waked the camp very 
thoroughly. It takes a good deal of prod¬ 
ding to put up a gun-bullock.” 

I heard a chain dragging along the ground, 
and a yoke of the great sulky white bullocks 
that drag the heavy siege-guns when the ele¬ 
phants won’t go any nearer to the firing, 
came shouldering along together; and almost 
stepping on the chain was another battery- 
mule, calling wildly for “ Billy.” 

“ That’s one of our recruits,” said the old 
mule to the troop-horse. “ He’s calling for 
me. Here, youngster, stop squealing; the 
dark never hurt anybody yet.” 

The gun-bullocks lay down together and 
began chewing the cud, but the young mule 
huddled close to Billy. 

‘‘ Things! ” he said; “ fearful and horrible 
things, Billy! They came into our lines while 
we were asleep. D’ you think they ’ll kill 
us?” 



298 


THE JUNGLE BOOK 


“ I’ve a very great mind to give you a 
number one kicking,” said Billy. “ The idea 
of a fourteen-hand mule with your training 
disgracing the battery before this gentle¬ 
man ! ” 

‘‘ Gently, gently! ” said the troop-horse. 
“ Remember they are always like this to be¬ 
gin with. The first time I ever saw a man 
(it was in Australia when I was a three- 
year-old) I ran for half a day, and if I’d 
seen a camel I should have been running 
still.” 

Nearly all our horses for the English cav¬ 
alry are brought to India from Australia, 
and are broken in by the troopers themselves. 

“ True enough,” said Billy. “ Stop shak¬ 
ing, youngster. The first time they put the 
full harness with all its chains on my back, 
I stood on my fore legs and kicked every bit 
of it off. I had n’t learned the real science 
of kicking then, but the battery said they had 
never seen anything like it.” 




HER MAJESTY’S SERVANTS 299 


“ But this was n’t harness or anything that 
jingled,” said the young mule. ‘‘ You know 
I don’t mind that now, Billy. It was Things 
like trees, and they fell up and down the lines 
and bubbled; and my head-rope broke, and 
I could n’t find my driver, and I could n’t find 
you, Billy, so I ran off with — with these 
gentlemen.” 

‘‘ H’m! ” said Billy. ‘‘ As soon as I heard 
the camels were loose I came away on my 
own account, quietly. When a battery — a 
screw-gun mule calls gun-bullocks gentlemen, 
he must be very badly shaken up. Who are 
you fellows on the ground there? ” 

The gun-bullocks rolled their cuds, and an¬ 
swered both together: “ The seventh yoke of 

the first gun of the Big Gun Battery. We 
were asleep when the camels came, but when 
we were trampled on we got up and walked 
away. It is better to lie quiet in the mud 
than to be disturbed on good bedding. We 
told your friend here that there was nothing 



300 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


to be afraid of, but he knew so much that he 
thought otherwise. Wah!” 

They went on chewing. 

“ That comes of being afraid,” said Billy. 
“ You get laughed at by gun-bullocks. I 
hope you like it, young ’un.” 

The young mule’s teeth snapped, and I 
heard him say something about not being 
afraid of any beefy old bullock in the world; 
but the bullocks only clicked their horns to¬ 
gether and went on chewing. 

“ Now, don’t be angry after you’ve been 
afraid. That’s the worst kind of coward¬ 
ice,” said the troop-horse. “ Anybody can 
be forgiven for being scared in the night, I 
think, if they see things they don’t understand. 
We’ve broken out of our pickets, again and 
again, four hundred and fifty of us, just be¬ 
cause a new recruit got to telling tales of 
whip-snakes at home in Australia till we were 
scared to death of the loose ends of our head- 
ropes.” 




HER MAJESTY’S SERVANTS 301 


‘‘ That’s all very well in camp,” said Billy; 
“ I’m not above stampeding myself, for the 
fun of the thing, when I have n’t been out for 
a day or two; but what do you do on active 
service? ” 

‘‘ Oh, that’s quite another set of new 
shoes,” said the troop-horse. “ Dick Cun- 
liffe’s on my back then, and drives his knees 
into me, and all I have to do is to watch where 
I am putting my feet, and to keep my hind 
legs well under me, and be bridle-wise.” 

“ What’s bridle-wise ? ” said the young 
mule. 

By the Blue Gums of the Back Blocks,” 
snorted the troop-horse, “ do you mean to 
say that you are n’t taught to be bridle-wise 
in your business? How can you do any¬ 
thing, unless you can spin round at once when 
the rein is pressed on your neck? It means 
life or death to your man, and of course 
that’s life or death to you. Get round with 
your hind legs under you the instant you feel 




302 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


the rein on your neck. If you have n’t room 
to swing round, rear up a little and come 
round on your hind legs. That’s being 
bridle-wise.” 

“ We are n’t taught that way,” said Billy 
the mule stiffly. “We ’re taught to obey the 
man at our head: step off when he says so, 
and step in when he says so. I suppose it 
comes to the same thing. Now, with all this 
fine fancy business and rearing, which must 
be very bad for your hocks, what do you dof ” 

“ That depends,” said the troop-horse. 
“ Generally I have to go in among a lot of 
yelling, hairy men with knives,— long shiny 
knives, worse than the farrier’s knives,— and 
I have to take care that Dick’s boot is just 
touching the next man’s boot without crush¬ 
ing it. I can see Dick’s lance to the right of 
my right eye, and I know I’m safe. I 
should n’t care to be the man or horse that 
stood up to Dick and me when we ’re in a 
hurry.” 




HER MAJESTY’S SERVANTS 303 


“ Don’t the knives hurt? ” said the young 
mule. 

‘‘ Well, I got one cut across the chest once, 
but that was n’t Dick’s fault —” 

“ A lot I should have cared whose fault it 
was, if it hurt! ” said the young mule. 

“ You must,” said the troop-horse. If 
you don’t trust your man, you may as well 
run away at once. That’s what some of our 
horses do, and I don’t blame them. As I was 
saying, it was n’t Dick’s fault. The man 
was lying on the ground, and I stretched 
myself not to tread on him, and he slashed 
up at me. Next time I have to go over a 
man lying down I shall step on him — 
hard.” 

“ H’m! ” said Billy; “ it sounds very fool¬ 
ish. Knives are dirty things at any time. 
The proper thing to do is to climb up a 
mountain with a well-balanced saddle, hang 
on by all four feet and your ears too, and 
creep and crawl and wriggle along, till you 




304 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


come out hundreds of feet above any one else, 
on a ledge where there’s just room enough 
for your hoofs. Then you stand still and 
keep quiet,— never ask a man to hold your 
head, young ’un,— keep quiet while the guns 
are being put together, and then you watch 
the little poppy shells drop down into the 
tree-tops ever so far below.” 

Don’t you ever trip ? ” said the troop- 
horse. 

“ They say that when a mule trips you can 
split a hen’s ear,” said Billy. “ Now and 
again per-haps a badly packed saddle will 
upset a mule, but it’s very seldom. I wish 
I could show you our business. It’s beauti¬ 
ful. Why, it took me three years to find out 
what the men were driving at. The science 
of the thing is never to show up against the 
sky-line, because, if you do, you may get fired 
at. Remember that, young ’un. Always 
keep hidden as much as possible, even if you 
have to go a mile out of your way. I lead 




HER MAJESTY’S SERVANTS 305 


the battery when it comes to that sort of 
climbing.” 

“ Fired at without the chance of running 
into the people who are firing! ” said the 
troop-horse, thinking hard. “ I could n’t 
stand that. I should want to charge, with 
Dick.” 

“ Oh no, you would n’t; you know that as 
soon as the guns are in position they 11 do all 
the charging. That’s scientific and neat; 
but knives — pah! ” 

The baggage-camel had been bobbing his 
head to and fro for some time past, anxious 
to get a word in edgeways. Then I heard 
him say, as he cleared his throat, nervously: 

“I — I — I have fought a little, but 
not in that climbing way or that running 
way.” 

‘‘ No. Now you mention it,” said Billy, 
‘‘ you don’t look as though you were made 
for climbing or running — much. Well, how 
was it, old Hay-bale.? ” 




306 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


“ The proper way,” said the camel. “We 
all sat down —” 

“ Oh, my crupper and breastplate! ” said 
the troop-horse under his breath. “ Sat 
down ? ” 

“ We sat down — a hundred of us,” the 
camel went on, “ in a big square, and the 
men piled our packs and saddles outside the 
square, and they fired over our backs, the men 
did, on all sides of the square.” 

“ What sort of men ? Any men that came 
along.? ” said the troop-horse. “ They teach 
us in riding-school to lie down and let our 
masters fire across us, but Dick Cunliffe is 
the only man I’d trust to do that. It tickles 
my girths, and, besides, I can’t see with my 
head on the ground.” 

“ What does it matter who fires across 
you.? ” said the camel. “ There are plenty 
of men and plenty of other camels close by, 
and a great many clouds of smoke. I am not 
frightened then. I sit still and wait.” 





HER MAJESTY’S SERVANTS 307 


“ And yet,” said Billy, “ you dream bad 
dreams and upset the camp at night. Well! 
well I Before I’d lie down, not to speak of 
sitting down, and let a man fire across me, 
my heels and his head would have something 
to say to each other. Did you ever hear any¬ 
thing so awful as that.? ” 

There was a long silence, and then one of 
the gun-bullocks lifted up his big head and 
said, ‘‘ This is very foolish indeed. There is 
only one way of fighting.” 

“ Oh, go on,” said Billy. “ Please don’t 
mind me. I suppose you fellows fight stand¬ 
ing on your tails ? ” 

“ Only one way,” said the two together. 
(They must have been twins.) “This is 
that way. To put all twenty yoke of us to 
the big gun as soon as Two Tails trumpets.” 
(“ Two Tails ” is camp slang for the ele¬ 
phant.) 

“What does Two Tails trumpet for.?” 
said the young mule. 





308 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


“ To show that he is not going any nearer 
to the smoke on the other side. Two Tails 
is a great coward. Then we tug the big 
gun all together — Hey a — Hullah! Hee- 
yah! Hullah! do not climb like cats 

nor run like calves. We go across the level 
plain, twenty yoke of us, till we are unyoked 
again, and we graze while the big guns talk 
across the plain to some town with mud 
walls, and pieces of the wall fall out, and 
the dust goes up as though many cattle 
were coming home.” 

“ Oh! And you choose that time for 
grazing do you ? ” said the young mule. 

“ That time or any other. Eating is al¬ 
ways good. We eat till we are yoked up 
again and tug the gun back to where Two 
Tails is waiting for it. Sometimes there are 
big guns in the city that speak back, and 
some of us are killed, and then there is all 
the more grazing for those that are left. 
This is Fate — nothing but Fate. None the 







HER MAJESTY’S SERVANTS 309 


less, Two Tails is a great coward. That 
is the proper way to fight. We are brothers 
from Hapur. Our father was a sacred bull 
of Shiva. We have spoken.” 

“ Well, I’ve certainly learned something 
to-night,” said the troop-horse. “ Do you 
gentlemen of the screw-gun battery feel in¬ 
clined to eat when you are being fired at with 
big guns, and Two Tails is behind you? ” 

“ About as much as we feel inclined to 
sit down and let men sprawl all over us, or 
run into people with knives. I never heard 
such stuff. A mountain ledge, a well-bal¬ 
anced load, a driver you can trust to let you 
pick your own way, and I’m your mule; but 
the other things — no! ” said Billy, with a 
stamp of his foot. 

“ Of course,” said the troop-horse, every 
one is not made in the same way, and I can 
quite see that your family, on your father’s 
side, would fail to understand a great many 
things.” 




310 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


“ Never you mind my family on my 
father’s side,” said Billy angrily; for every 
mule hates to be reminded that his father 
was a donkey. “ My father was a Southern 
gentleman, and he could pull down and bite 
and kick into rags every horse he came 
across. Remember that, you big brown 
Brumby! ” 

Brumby means wild horse without any 
breeding. Imagine the feelings of Sunol if 
a car-horse called her a “ skate,” and you can 
imagine how the Australian horse felt. I saw 
the white of his eye glitter in the dark. 

“ See here, you son of an imported Malaga 
jackass,” he said between his teeth, “ I’d 
have you know that I’m related on my 
mother’s side to Carbine, winner of the Mel¬ 
bourne Cup, and where 7 come from we 
are n’t accustomed to being ridden over 
roughshod by any parrot-mouthed, pig¬ 
headed mule in a pop-gun pea-shooter bat¬ 
tery. Are you ready ? ” 





HER MAJESTY’S SERVANTS 311 


“ On your hind legs! ” squealed Billy. 
They both reared up facing each other, and 
I was expecting a furious fight, when a 
gurgly, rumbly voice called out of the dark¬ 
ness to the right —“ Children, what are you 
fighting about there Be quiet.” 

Both beasts dropped down with a snort of 
disgust, for neither horse nor mule can bear 
to listen to an elephant’s voice. 

“ It’s Two Tails! ” said the troop-horse. 
‘‘ I can’t stand him. A tail each end is n’t 
fair!” 

“ My feelings exactly,” said Billy, crowd¬ 
ing into the troop-horse for company. 
« We ’re very alike in some things.” 

‘‘ I suppose we’ve inherited them from our 
mothers,” said the troop-horse. It’s not 
worth quarreling about. Hi 1 Two Tails, are 
you tied up ? ” 

“ Yes,” said Two Tails, with a laugh all 
up his trunk. “ I’m picketed for the night. 
I’ve heard what you fellows have been say- 



312 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


ing. But don’t be afraid. I’m not coming 
over.” 

The bullocks and the camel said, half 
aloud: “ Afraid of Two Tails — what non¬ 

sense!” And the bullocks went on: “We 
are sorry that you heard, but it is true. Two 
Tails, why are you afraid of the guns when 
they fire ? ” 

“ Well,” said Two Tails, rubbing one hind 
leg against the other, exactly like a little boy 
saying a piece, “ I don’t quite know whether 
you’d understand.” 

“ We don’t, but we have to pull the guns,” 
said the bullocks. 

“ I know it, and I know you are a good 
deal braver than you think you are. But 
it’s different with me. My battery captain 
called me a Pachydermatous Anachronism the 
other day.” 

“ That’s another way of fighting, I sup¬ 
pose.^ ” said Billy, who was recovering his 
spirits. 




HER MAJESTY’S SERVANTS 313 


“ You don’t know what that means, of 
course, but I do. It means betwixt and be¬ 
tween, and that is just where I am. I can 
see inside my head what will happen when a 
shell bursts; and you bullocks can’t.” 

“ I can,” said the troop-horse. “ At least 
a little bit. I try not to think about it.” 

“ I can see more than you, and I do think 
about it. I know there’s a great deal of me 
to take care of, and I know that nobody knows 
how to cure me when I’m sick. All they can 
do is to stop my driver’s pay till I get well, 
and I can’t trust my driver.” 

‘‘ Ah! ” said the troop-horse. “ That ex¬ 
plains it. I can trust Dick.” 

“ You could put a whole regiment of Dicks 
on my back without making me feel any 
better. I know just enough to be uncom¬ 
fortable, and not enough to go on in spite of 
it.” 

“ We do not understand,” said the bul¬ 
locks. 




314 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


“ I know you don’t. I’m not talking to 
you. You don’t know what blood is.” 

“ We do,” said the bullocks. “ It is red 
stuff that soaks into the ground and smells.” 

The troop-horse gave a kick and a bound 
and a snort. 

“ Don’t talk of it,” he said. “ I can smell 
it now, just thinking of it. It makes me 
want to run — when I have n’t Dick on my 
back.” 

‘‘ But it is not here,” said the camel and 
the bullocks. “ Why are you so stupid ? ” 

“ It’s vile stuff,” said Billy. “ I don’t 
want to run, but I don’t want to talk about 
it.” 

“ There you are! ” said Two Tails, wav¬ 
ing his tail to explain. 

“ Surely. Yes, we have been here all 
night,” said the bullocks. 

Two Tails stamped his foot till the iron 
ring on it jingled. “ Oh, I’m not talking to 
you. You can’t see inside your heads.” 










HER MAJESTY’S SERVANTS 315 


“No. We see out of our four eyes,” said 
the bullocks. “We see straight in front of 
us.” 

“ If I could do that and nothing else you 
would n’t be needed to pull the big guns at 
all. If I was like my captain — he can see 
things inside his head before the firing begins, 
and he shakes all over, but he knows too much 
to run away — if I was like him I could pull 
the guns. But if I were as wise as all that I 
should never be here. I should be a king in 
the forest, as I used to be, sleeping half the 
day and bathing when I liked. I have n’t 
had a good bath for a month.” 

“ That’s all very fine,” said Billy; “ but 
giving a thing a long name does n’t make it 
any better.” 

“ H’sh! ” said the troop-horse. “ I think 
I understand what Two Tails means.” 

“ You ’ll understand better in a minute,” 
said Two Tails angrily. “ Now, just you ex¬ 
plain to my why you don’t like this! ” 



316 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


He began trumpeting furiously at the top 
of his trumpet. 

“ Stop that! ” said Billy and the troop- 
horse together, and I could hear them 
stamp and shiver. An elephant’s trumpet¬ 
ing is always nasty, especially on a dark 
night. 

“ I sha’n’t stop,” said Two Tails. “ Won’t 
you explain that, please Hhrrmphf Rrrt! 
Rrrmph! Rrrhha! ” Then he stopped 
suddenly, and I heard a little whimper in the 
dark, and knew that Vixen had found me at 
last. She knew as well as I did that if there 
is one thing in the world the elephant is more 
afraid of than another it is a little barking 
dog; so she stopped to bully Two Tails in his 
pickets, and yapped round his big feet. Two 
Tails shuffled and squeaked. “ Go away, lit¬ 
tle dog! ” he said. “ Don’t snuff at my an¬ 
kles, or I ’ll kick at you. Good little dog — 
nice little doggie, then! Go home, you 
yelping little beast! Oh, why doesn’t some 




HER MAJESTY’S SERVANTS 317 


one take her away ? She ’ll bite me in a 
minute.” 

“ Seems to me,” said Billy to the troop- 
horse, ‘‘ that our friend Two Tails is afraid 
of most things. Now, if I had a full meal for 
every dog I’ve kicked across the parade- 
ground, I should be as fat as Two Tails 
nearly.” 

I whistled, and Vixen ran up to me, muddy 
all over, and licked my nose, and told me a 
long tale about hunting for me all through 
the camp. I never let her know that I under¬ 
stood beast talk, or she would have taken 
all sorts of liberties. So I buttoned her 
into the breast of my overcoat, and Two 
Tails shuffled and stamped and growled to 
himself. 

‘‘ Extraordinary! Most extraordinary! ” 
he said. “ It runs in our family. Now, 
where has that nasty little beast gone to ” 

I heard him feeling about with his trunk. 

“We all seem to be affected in various 




318 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


ways,” he went on, blowing his nose. “ Now, 
you gentlemen were alarmed, I believe, when 
I trumpeted.” 

“ Not alarmed, exactly,” said the troop- 
horse, but it made me feel as though I had 
hornets where my saddle ought to be. Don’t 
begin again.” 

“ I’m frightened of a little dog, and the 
camel here is frightened by bad dreams in the 
night.” 

It is very lucky for us that we have n’t 
all got to fight in the same way,” said the 
troop-horse. 

“ What I want to know,” said the young 
mule, who had been quiet for a long time — 
“ what 1 want to know is, why we have to fight 
at all.” 

“ Because we are told to,” said the troop- 
horse, with a snort of contempt. 

“ Orders,” said Billy the mule; and his 
teeth snapped. 

“ Hukm hai! ” (It is an order), said the 




HER MAJESTY’S SERVANTS 319 


camel with a gurgle; and Two Tails and the 
bullocks repeated, “ Hukm hai! ” 

“ Yes, but who gives the orders? ” said the 
recruit-mule. 

“ The man who walks at your head — Or 
sits on your back — Or holds the nose-rope 
— Or twists your tail,” said Billy and the 
troop-horse and the camel and the bullocks 
one after the other. 

“ But who gives them the orders ? ” 

“ Now you want to know too much, young 
’un,” said Billy, “ and that is one way of get¬ 
ting kicked. All you have to do is to obey 
the man at your head and ask no questions.” 

“ He’s quite right,” said Two Tails. ‘‘ I 
can’t always obey, because I’m betwixt and 
between; but Billy’s right. Obey the man 
next to you who gives the order, or you ’ll 
stop all the battery, besides getting a thrash- 
ing.” 

The gun-bullocks got up to go. ‘‘ Morn¬ 
ing is coming,” they said. “ We will go back 




320 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


to our lines. It is true that we see only out of 
our eyes, and we are not very clever; but still, 
we are the only people to-night who have 
not been afraid. Good night, you brave 
people.” 

Nobody answered, and the troop-horse said, 
to change the conversation, ‘‘ Where’s that 
little dog.^ A dog means a man somewhere 
near.” 

“ Here I am,” yapped Vixen, “ under the 
guntail with my man. You big, blundering 
beast of a camel you, you upset our tent. 
My man’s very angry.” 

“ Phew! ” said the bullocks. “ He must 
be white ? ” 

“ Of course he is,” said Vixen. “ Do you 
suppose I’m looked after by a black bullock- 
driver ? ” 

“ Huah! Ouach! Ugh! ” said the bul¬ 
locks. “ Let us get away quickly.” 

They plunged forward in the mud, and 
managed somehow to run their yoke on 




HER MAJESTY’S SERVANTS 321 


the pole of an ammunition-wagon, where it 
jammed. 

“ Now you have done it,” said Billy calmly. 

Don’t struggle. You ’re hung up till day¬ 
light. What on earth’s the matter?” 

The bullocks went off into the long hissing 
snorts that Indian cattle give, and pushed 
and crowded and slued and stamped and 
slipped and nearly fell down in the mud, 
grunting savagely. 

“ You ’ll break your necks in a minute,” 
said the troop-horse. “ What’s the matter 
with white men? I live with ’em.” 

“ They — eat — us! Pull! ” said the 
near bullock: the yoke snapped with a twang, 
and they lumbered off together. 

I never knew before what made Indian cat¬ 
tle so afraid of Englishmen. We eat beef 
— a thing that no cattle-driver touches — 
and of course the cattle do not like it. 

“ May I be flogged with my own pad- 
chains ! Who’d have thought of two big 



322 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


lumps like those losing their heads? ” said 
Billy. 

“ Never mind. I’m going to look at this 
man. Most of the white men, I know, have 
things in their pockets,” said the troop-horse. 

‘‘ I ’ll leave you, then. I can’t say I’m 
over-fond of ’em myself. Besides, white men 
who have n’t a place to sleep in are more than 
likely to be thieves, and I’ve a good deal of 
Government property on my back. Come 
along, young ’un, and we ’ll go back to our 
lines. Good-night, Australia! See you on 
parade to-morrow, I suppose. Good-night, 
old Hay-bale I — try to control your feelings, 
won’t you? Good-night, Two Tails I If you 
pass us on the ground to-morrow, don’t trum¬ 
pet. It spoils our formation.” 

Billy the mule stumped off with the swag¬ 
gering limp of an old campaigner, as the 
troop-horse’s head came nuzzling into my 
breast, and I gave him biscuits; while Vixen, 
who is a most conceited little dog, told him 




HER MAJESTY’S SERVANTS S2S 


fibs about the scores of horses that she and 
I kept. 

“ I’m coming to the parade to-morrow in 
my dog-cart,” she said. “ Where will you 
be.?” 

“ On the left hand of the second squadron. 
I set the time for all my troop, little lady,” 
he said politely. “ Now I must go back to 
Dick. My tail’s all muddy, and he ’ll have 
two hours’ hard work dressing me for the 
parade.” 

The big parade of all the thirty thousand 
men was held that afternoon, and Vixen and 
I had a good place close to the Viceroy and 
the Amir of Afghanistan, with his high big 
black hat of astrakhan wool and the great 
diamond star in the center. The first part of 
the review was all sunshine, and the regiments 
went by in wave upon wave of legs all moving 
together, and guns all in a line, till our eyes 
grew dizzy. Then the cavalry came up, to 
the beautiful cavalry canter of “ Bonnie Dun- 




324 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


dee,” and Vixen cocked her ear where she sat 
on the dog-cart. The second squadron of 
the lancers shot by, and there was the troop- 
horse, with his tail like spun silk, his head 
pulled into his breast, one ear forward and 
one back, setting the time for all his squadron, 
his legs going as smoothly as waltz-music. 
Then the big guns came by, and I saw Two 
Tails and two other elephants harnessed in 
line to a forty-pounder siege-gun while twenty 
yoke of oxen walked behind. The seventh 
pair had a new yoke, and they looked rather 
stiff and tired. Last came the screw-guns, 
and Billy the mule carried himself as though 
he commanded all the troops, and his harness 
was oiled and polished till it winked. I gave 
a cheer all by myself for Billy the mule, but 
he never looked right or left. 

The rain began to fall again, and for a 
while it was too misty to see what the troops 
were doing. They had made a big half-circle 
across the plain, and were spreading out into 






HER MAJESTY’S SERVANTS S25 


a line. That line grew and grew and grew 
till it was three-quarters of a mile long from 
wing to wing — one solid wall of men, horses, 
and guns. Then it came on straight toward 
the Viceroy and the Amir, and as it got nearer 
the ground began to shake, like the deck of a 
steamer when the engines are going fast. 

Unless you have been there you cannot 
imagine what a frightening effect this steady 
come-down of troops has on the spectators, 
even when they know it is only a review. I 
looked at the Amir. Up till then he had not 
shown the shadow of a sign of astonishment 
or anything else; but now his eyes began to 
get bigger and bigger, and he picked up the 
reins on his horse’s neck and looked behind 
him. For a minute it seemed as though he 
were going to draw his sword and slash his 
way out through the English men and women 
in the carriages at the back. Then the ad¬ 
vance stopped dead, the ground stood still, 
the whole line saluted, and thirty bands began 




to play all together. That was the end of 
the review, and the regiments went off to their 
camps in the rain; and an infantry band 
struck up with — 

The animals went in two by two, 

Hurrah! 

The animals went in two by two. 

The elephant and the battery mu- 
r, and they all got into the Ark, 

For to get out of the rain! 

Then I heard an old, grizzled, long-haired 
Central Asian chief, who had come down with 
the Amir, asking questions of a native officer., 

“ Now,” said he, “ in what manner was this 
wonderful thing done ? ” 

And the officer answered, “ There was an 
order, and they obeyed.” 

‘‘ But are the beasts as wise as the men.?* ” 
said the chief. 

“ They obey, as the men do. Mule, horse, 
elephant, or bullock, he obeys his driver, and 
the driver his sergeant, and the sergeant his 
lieutenant, and the lieutenant his captain, and 







: 

ill.' 




HER MAJESTY’S SERVANTS 327 


the captain his major, and the major his colo¬ 
nel, and the colonel his brigadiei* commanding 
three regiments, and the brigadier his general, 
who obeys the Viceroy, who is the servant of 
the Empress. Thus it is done.” 

“ Would it were so in Afghanistan! ” said 
the chief; “ for there we obey only our own 
wills.” 

“ And for that reason,” said the native of¬ 
ficer, twirling his mustache, “ your Amir 
whom you do not obey must come here and 
take orders from our Viceroy.” 




328 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


PARADE-SONG OF THE CAMP 
ANIMALS 

ELEPHANTS OF THE GUN-TEAM 

We lent to Alexander the strength of Hercules, 

The wisdom of our foreheads, the cunning of 
our knees; 

We bowed our necks to service; they ne’er were 
loosed again,— 

Make way there, way for the ten-foot teams 
Of the Forty-Pounder train! 

GUN-BULLOCKS 

Those heroes in their harnesses avoid a cannon¬ 
ball. 

And what they know of powder upsets them 
one and all; 

Then we come into action and tug the guns 
again,— 

Make way there, way for the twenty yoke 
Of the Forty-Pounder train! 

CAVALRY HORSES 

By the brand on my withers, the finest of tunes 

Is played by the Lancers, Hussars, and Dra¬ 
goons, 






HER MAJESTY’S SERVANTS 329 


And it’s sweeter than “ Stables ” or “ Water ” 
to me. 

The Cavalry Canter of “ Bonnie Dundee ”! 

Then feed us and break us and handle and 
groom. 

And give us good riders and plenty of room. 

And launch us in column of squadrons and see 

The way of the war-horse to “ Bonnie Dun¬ 
dee ”! 


SCREW-GUN MULES 

As me and my companions were scrambling up 
a hill. 

The path was lost in rolling stones, but we went 
forward still; 

For we can wriggle and climb, my lads, and 
turn up everywhere. 

And it’s our delight on a mountain height, with 
a leg or two to spare! 

Good luck to every sergeant, then, that lets us 
pick our road; 

Bad luck to all the driver-men that cannot pack 
a load; 

For we can wriggle and climb, my lads, and 
turn up everywhere. 



330 THE JUNGLE BOOK 


And it’s our delight on a mountain height with 
a leg or two to spare! 

COMMISSARIAT CAMELS 

We have n’t a camelty tune of our own 
To help us trollop along, 

But every neck is a hairy trombone 
{Rtt-ta-ta-ta! is a hairy trombone!) 

And this is our marching song: 

Can^il DonH! Sha*nH! WonH! 

Pass it along the line! 

Somebody’s pack has slid from his back. 
Wish it were only mine! 

Somebody’s load has tipped off in the road — 
Cheer for a halt and a row! 

UrrrI Yarrh! Grr! Arrh! 

Somebody’s catching it now ! 

ALL THE BEASTS TOGETHER 

Children of the Camp are we. 

Serving each in his degree; 

Children of the yoke and goad, 

Pack and harness, pad and load. 

See our line across the plain, 

Like a heel-rope bent again. 

Reaching, writhing, rolling far. 




HER MAJESTY’S SERVANTS 331 


Sweeping all away to war! 

While the men that wal|i beside, 
Dusty, silent, heavy-eyed. 

Cannot tell why we or they 
March and suffer day by day. 
Children of the Camp are rve. 
Serving each in his degree; 
Children of the yoke and goad. 
Pack and harness, pad and load. 










































































































































































































